Byron Cummings

Byron Cummings, known to students and colleagues as “The Dean,” had a profound influence on the archaeology of Arizona and Utah during its early development. An explorer, archaeologist, anthropologist, teacher, museum director, university administrator, and state parks commissioner, Cummings was involved in many important discoveries in the American Southwest over the first half of the twentieth century and was a pioneer in the education of generations of archaeologists and anthropologists. This book presents the first comprehensive examination of Cummings’ life, offering readers a greater understanding of his trailblazing work. Todd Bostwick elucidates Cummings’ many intellectual and cultural contributions, investigates the controversies in which he was embroiled, and describes his battles to wrest control of Arizona archaeology from eastern institutions that had long dominated Southwest archaeology. Cummings saw the Southwest as an American wilderness where the story of cultural development revealed by the archaeologist and anthropologist was as important as it was in Europe. Bostwick’s meticulous account of his life reflects his great reverence for the region and pays tribute to a man whose dedication, mentoring, and friendship have forever sealed his place as The Dean.

The Colorado River Plateau is home to two of the best-known landscapes in the world: Rainbow Bridge in southern Utah and Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border. Twentieth-century popular culture made these places icons of the American West, and advertising continues to exploit their significance today. In Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley, Thomas J. Harvey artfully tells how Navajos and Anglo-Americans created fabrics of meaning out of this stunning desert landscape, space that western novelist Zane Grey called “the storehouse of unlived years,” where a rugged, more authentic life beckoned. Harvey explores the different ways in which the two societies imbued the landscape with deep cultural significance. Navajos long ago incorporated Rainbow Bridge into the complex origin story that embodies their religion and worldview. In the early 1900s, archaeologists crossed paths with Grey in the Rainbow Bridge area. Grey, credited with making the modern western novel popular, sought freedom from the contemporary world and reimagined the landscape for his own purposes. In the process, Harvey shows, Grey erased most of the Navajo inhabitants. This view of the landscape culminated in filmmaker John Ford’s use of Monument Valley as the setting for his epic mid-twentieth-century Westerns. Harvey extends the story into the late twentieth century when environmentalists sought to set aside Rainbow Bridge as a symbolic remnant of nature untainted by modernization. Tourists continue to flock to Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge, as they have for a century, but the landscapes are most familiar today because of their appearances in advertising. Monument Valley has been used to sell perfume, beer, and sport utility vehicles. Encompassing the history of the Navajo, archaeology, literature, film, environmentalism, and tourism, Rainbow Bridge to Monument Valley explores how these rock formations, Navajo sacred spaces still, have become embedded in the modern identity of the American West—and of the nation itself.

This major synthesis of work explores new evidence gathered at Basketmaker III sites on the Colorado Plateau in search of further understanding of Anasazi development. Since the 1960s, large-scale cultural resource management projects have revealed the former presence of Anasazi within the entire northern Southwest. These discoveries have resulted in a greatly expanded view of the BMIII period (A.D. 550-750) which immediately proceeds the Pueblo phase. Particularly noteworthy are finding of Basketmaker remains under those of later periods and in sites with open settings, as opposed to the more classic Basketmaker cave and rock shelter sites. Foundations of Anasazi Culture explores this new evidence in search of further understanding of Anasazi development. Several chapters address the BMII-BMIII transition, including the initial production and use of pottery, greater reliance on agriculture, and the construction of increasingly elaborate structures. Other chapters move beyond the transitional period to discuss key elements of the Anasazi lifestyle, including the use of gray-,red-, and white-ware ceramics, pit structures, storage cists, surface rooms, full dependence on agriculture, and varying degrees of social specialization and differentiation. A number of contributions address one or more of these issues as they occur at specific sites. Other contributors consider the material culture of the period in terms of common elements in architecture, ceramics, lithic technology, and decorative media. This work on BMIII sites on the Colorado Plateau will be useful to anyone with an interest in the earliest days of Anasazi civilization.

A visitor's guide to the ancient Maya cities of Mexico provides photos, descriptions, and up-to-date tourist information on seventy archaeological sites and sixty museums, detailing the art, architecture, and history of each.

Byron Cummings, known to students and colleagues as ÒThe Dean,Ó had a profound influence on the archaeology of Arizona and Utah during its early development. An explorer, archaeologist, anthropologist, teacher, museum director, university administrator, and state parks commissioner, Cummings was involved in many important discoveries in the American Southwest over the first half of the twentieth century and was a pioneer in the education of generations of archaeologists and anthropologists. This book presents the first comprehensive examination of CummingsÕ life, offering readers a greater understanding of his trailblazing work. Todd Bostwick elucidates CummingsÕ many intellectual and cultural contributions, investigates the controversies in which he was embroiled, and describes his battles to wrest control of Arizona archaeology from eastern institutions that had long dominated Southwest archaeology. Cummings saw the Southwest as an American wilderness where the story of cultural development revealed by the archaeologist and anthropologist was as important as it was in Europe. BostwickÕs meticulous account of his life reflects his great reverence for the region and pays tribute to a man whose dedication, mentoring, and friendship have forever sealed his place as The Dean.