BEHIND THE BEARS EARS

An archaeologist delivers an in-depth history, stretching thousands of years, of an iconic and embattled Southwestern cultural area.

Archaeologists have long known that the Four Corners area of southeastern Utah is a cultural boundary zone, marking the westernmost extension of the ancient Mesa Verde region. “As archaeology has progressed upward,” writes Burrillo, “from consideration solely of artifacts, to consideration of sites, to consideration of communities, to consideration of culture areas…archaeologists have come to appreciate that no accurate portrayal of human sociocultural anything can be fully understood at less than a regional scale.” The Bears Ears area contains hundreds of sites and has been little explored, and though set aside for federal protection by Barack Obama, Donald Trump has decommissioned most of the vast site in favor of oil and gas development. Burrillo is an able interpreter of the place, locating it within a larger story of how archaeologists do their work, especially when it comes to cultural remains that are very old and thus usually very scarce. “Animal skins and ephemeral huts and whatever food they managed to collect or clobber with simple tools” usually don’t have a long shelf life. This has led to considerable speculation and the rise of interesting if controversial theories, including the thought that Chaco Canyon, also allied with Mesa Verde, was ruled by “a series of mighty queens,” an interpretation that Burrillo calls “pretty cool.” The author points the way toward pit houses, archaeoastronomical sites, petroglyphs, and other features without giving away too much specific information that might guide vandals and artifact hunters to the area. Wisely, he also suggests that ethnographic interpretation be left to Native peoples of the area, whose stories and legends are a form of history: “The deep history of Bears Ears is mostly Indigenous, after all, so the future of its archaeology should be mostly Indigenous as well.”

Solid history and archaeology combines with an understated call to preserve Bears Ears—all of it, not just a sliver.