A fresh volume on the ancient structures of Chaco Canyon, built by native peoples between AD 850 and 1130, that unifies older information on the area with new advanced research techniques focusing on studies of technology and building types, analyses of architectural change, and readings of the built environment, aided by over 150 maps, floor plans, elevations and photos.

The site of a great Ancestral Pueblo center in the 11th and 12th centuries AD, the ruins in Chaco Canyon look like a city to some archaeologists, a ceremonial center to others. Chaco and the people who created its monumental great houses, extensive roads, and network of outlying settlements remain an enigma in American archaeology. Two decades after the latest and largest program of field research at Chaco (the National Park Service's Chaco Project from 1971 to 1982) the original researchers and other leading Chaco scholars convened to evaluate what they now know about Chaco in light of new theories and new data. Those meetings culminated in an advanced seminar at the School of American Research, where the Chaco Project itself was born in 1968. In this capstone volume, the contributors address central archaeological themes, including environment, organization of production, architecture, regional issues, and society and polity. They place Chaco in its time and in its region, considering what came before and after its heyday and its neighbors to the north and south, including Mesoamerica.

The House of the Cylinder Jars documents the re-excavation of Room 28, and places it within the context of other rooms at Pueblo Bonito, and describes the ritual termination by fire of the materials stored in the room.