These essays summarize the results of new excavation and survey research at Bandelier National Monument, with special attention to determining why larger sites appear when and where they do, and how life in these later villages and towns differed from life in the earlier small hamlets that first dotted the Pajarito in the mid-1100s.

Few visitors to the stunning Frijoles Canyon at Bandelier National Monument realize that its depths embrace but a small part of the archaeological richness of the vast Pajarito Plateau west of Santa Fe, New Mexico. In this beautifully illustrated book, archaeologists, historians, ecologists, and Pueblo contributors tell a deep and sweeping story of the region. Beginning with its first Paleo-Indian residents, through its Ancestral Pueblo florescence in the 14th and 15th centuries, to its role in the birth of American archaeology and the nuclear age, and concluding with its enduring centrality in the lives of Keresan and Tewa Indian peoples today, the plateau remains a place where the mysterious interplay of human culture and magnificent landscapes is written in its mesas and canyons. A must read for anyone interested in Southwestern archaeology and Native peoples.