Carrie Heitman, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, and colleagues had their book The Greater Chaco Landscape: Ancestors, Scholarship and Advocacy published today by the University Press of Colorado.
The book has been released both as a print publication and an open-access online publication. The project presents visual and textual material in an open-access format to examine an ancient landscape threatened by oil and gas development in the American Southwest. The book focuses on Chaco Canyon (a National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site) and Chaco-era great houses and associated communities from southeast Utah to west-central New Mexico in the context of landscape archaeology.
The project incorporates Indigenous perspectives with video chapters presented by Acoma, Diné, Zuni, and Hopi cultural experts filmed on location in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Contributors analyze many different dimensions of the Chacoan landscape and present the most effective, innovative, and respectful means of studying and protecting them.
The book was co-edited with Ruth Van Dyke, a professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, SUNY.
Heitman is the Acting Co-Director of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and part of the College of Arts and Sciences. She has helped build the Chaco Research Archive and the Salmon Pueblo Archaeological Research Collection.
Van Dyke is an archaeologist specializing in the North American Southwest and directs projects on the Chaco landscape in northwest New Mexico and on historic Alsatian immigration in Texas.
