Explore pivotal Anasazi sites and understand the forces that shaped them with these authorative guides. Written by the author of The Anasazi Guide, these informative guides incorporate the latest archeological research and offer unique insights into the places, artifacts, and people we call Anasazi. 

Site Guides

 The Adventurers' Companion: Lowry Pueblo

Lowry Pueblo is one of the most important Chacoan sites in the Mesa Verde area and includes a unique great kiva. The Pueblo is one of three hardened sites within Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and the Bureau of Land Management has a nice brochure written for visitors with little prior knowledge. More seasoned visitors may feel the need for additional information and this site guide includes stop-by-stop descriptions and complements my description in The Anasazi Guide.

The Adventurer's Companion: Sand Canyon Pueblo

Sand Canyon Pueblo is one of several sites that display the violence that engulfed the Anasazi in the thirteenth century. Little detailed information is available to the general public, but The Anasazi Guide explains the site's importance. This site guide compliments the Guide with stop-by-stop descriptions.

A Day Hike in Sand Canyon

The Sand Canyon Trail is a 6.5 mile trail through an area that was densely populated during Pueblo III and earlier eras.  Maintained by the Bureau of Land Management, the trail is a pleasant walk with lots of spurs and sites of interest.

Self discovery is the order of the day in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument and there is lots to see on which I won't comment. This guide is intended to help you get started and I hope you will email suggestions and comments.

The Adventurers' Companion: Pueblo Bonito

Pueblo Bonito is a large and complex site. The National Park Service has a self-guided interpretive booklet, but it is a decade old and does not reference critical current research. This guide compliments The Anasazi Guide and provides stop by stop commentary.  

Tour Notes on Aztec Ruins

Aztec Ruins is an important site, but the National Monument tells less of the story than it should. Originally created in 1923, the monument focused almost exclusively on one pueblo, the West Ruin, while other sites on and near the property remain largely unexcavated. The National Park Service is expanding the monument to include more of the original settlement and making efforts to improve the interpretive materials, but more remains to be done. While volunteering there, I tried to help visitors understand the larger community and the notes  reproduced here are part of that effort.

Pocket Guides

Anasazi Painted Pottery

Satisfy your curiosity and unlock the secrets of painted Anasazi ceramic fragments. These handy guides make it possible to readily date painted Anasazi sherds, determine when a village was abandoned, and accurately describe your discoveries.

The first covers painted ceramics produced between 550 AD and 1300 AD in the northern San Juan/Mesa Verde area (northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, and southeastern Utah). The second covers ceramics in the Chacoan core (north central New Mexico and eastern Arizona) between 500 AD and 1300 AD.

Anasazi Painted Pottery: Northern San Juan/Mesa Verde

Anasazi Painted Pottery: The Chacoan Core

Additional information about ceramic production and its impact on Anasazi life ways can be found in Chapters 1 and 5 as well as Appendix C of The Anasazi Guide.

 Southwestern Stone Points

Rapidly identify typical spear, dart, and arrow heads, and understand what they tell you about the people who created them. This handy pocket guide folds to a convenient pocket size and features precise line drawings as well as descriptions of stone points found in the Anasazi homeland (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah). It covers the eleven principal types from Clovis, Folsom, and Midland through Pueblo III side-notched.

Southwestern Stone Points

Additional information about the spears, atlatls, and arrows used with these points as well as the impact of evolving weaponry can be found in Chapter 6 and Appendix C of The Anasazi Guide.

Interpretive Essays

What is a Kiva?

Kivas are defining features of Anasazi sites and you will see one or more at each site you visit. For example, 25 kivas are visible at Pueblo Bonito and archaeologists believe there are at least 8 more buried beneath subsequent buildings. This  essay  will help you understand what a kiva is and what you are looking at when you see one.

Echoes of Pipe Spring National Monument

Pipe Spring National Monument focuses on Mormon occupancy and subsequent cattle ranching during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During three months guiding visitors, I heard echoes of a much older story. This essay explains that story in greater detail. 

What  is a Chacoan Great House or Outlier

Archaeologists describe several structures as "Chacoan Outliers." Examples include Lowry Pueblo and Aztec Ruins. All told, more than 200 Chacoan Outliers have been mapped and archaeologists use specific criteria to identify them. Those criteria are summarized in this essay. 

What's in a Name?

Some Native American groups object to the name, "Anasazi," and the National Park Service prefers the phrase "ancestral puebloans."  I continue call the ancient people Anasazi, but I do so with a couple reservations.  This essay explains my thinking.  

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