Suddenly abandoned around 1300 c.e., and still only about 10 percent excavated, the thousands of D-shaped Great Houses and other sites in or around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon constitute a fertile field for archaeological investigation and speculation. Here, squired by a local researcher, veteran traveler Lourie does both, touring the rocky, sunburned area, offering awed descriptions of major sites, historical background on their modern rediscovery, accounts of current theories about Anasazi—or “Ancestral Puebloan People,” to use a less judgmental moniker (“Anasazi” means “ancestors of the enemy” in the Navajo language)—lifeways, and plenty of sharply focused color photos, to which he adds historical portraits and landscapes. The author’s enthusiasm gives this handsome travelogue an inviting immediacy; readers will come away with a clear sense of how little is known, and how much remains to be discovered, about this mysterious civilization. (index, skimpy bibliography) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
