An encyclopedia presents information on the site of prehistoric habitation in northwestern New Mexico, accompanied by a history of Chaco, an account of exploration and investigation, and an annotated bibliography.

The first complete account of Chacoan archaeology, from the discovery of the ruins by Spanish soldiers in the seventeenth century, through the scientific analyses of the 1970s.

Startling discoveries and impassioned debates have emerged from the "Chaco Phenomenon" since the publication of New Light on Chaco Canyon twenty years ago. This completely updated edition features seventeen original essays, scores of photographs, maps, and site plans, and the perspectives of archaeologists, historians, and Native American thinkers. Key topics include the rise of early great houses; the structure of agricultural life among the people of Chaco Canyon; their use of sacred geography and astronomy in organizing their spiritual cosmology; indigenous knowledge about Chaco from the perspective of Hopi, Tewa, and Navajo peoples; and the place of Chaco in the wider world of archaeology. For more than a century archaeologists and others have pursued Chaco Canyon's many and elusive meanings. In Search of Chaco brings these explorations to a new generation of enthusiasts.

Beautifully illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, "Chaco Canyon" draws on the very latest research on Chaco and its environs to tell the remarkable story of the people of the canyon, from foraging bands and humble farmers to the elaborate society that flourished between the 10th and 12th centuries A.D.

Pueblo Bonito is the largest and most famous ruin in New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Built by the ancestral Puebloan people some 1,000 years ago, the ruin testifies to one of the oldest and most complex societies ever discovered in North America. Study of the large corpus of data continues to generate new ideas about the people who lived their and their way of life. This extensively illustrated volume commemorates the recent centennial of the first large-scale excavations at Pueblo Bonito, with leading experts writing on various aspects of the site, including its setting, construction sequence and labor requirements, possible astronomical orientations and related rituals, and burials. The book probes deeply for answers to these and other perplexing questions about Pueblo Bonito and its people.