Product Description

The tortuous canyon country of southeastern Utah conceals thousands of archaeological sites, ancient homes of the ancestors of today's Southwest Indian peoples. Late in the nineteenth century, adventurous cowboy-archaeologists made the first forays into the canyons in search of the material remains of these prehistoric cultures. Rancher Richard Wetherill (best known as the "discoverer" of Mesa Verde's Cliff Palace) and his brothers; entrepreneurs Charles McLoyd and Charles Cary Graham; and numerous other adventurers, scholars, preachers, and businessmen mounted expeditions into the area now known as Grand Gulch.

With varying degrees of scientific rigor, they mapped and dug the canyon's rich archaeological sites, removing large numbers of artifacts and burial goods to exhibit or sell back home-whether "home" was Durango, Chicago, New York, or Helsinki. During a trip in the winter of 1893-94, Richard Wetherill unearthed convincing proof that a previously unrecognized group of people had lived in Grand Gulch before the so-called Anasazi, or Cliff Dwellers. Wetherill named these people the "Basket Makers" and inaugurated a new era of understanding of the region's prehistoric past.

Almost one hundred years later, the modern-day adventure that became known as the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Research Project began. Intrigued by the poorly documented history of the Gulch, a group of avocational archaeologists launched a grassroots effort to recover that history and locate the many artifacts that had been extracted from southeastern Utah's arid soil. The Gulch, they found, contained its own invaluable clues in the form of dated signatures left on canyon walls by the Wetherills and others as they made their way from site to site. An effort to track the original explorers in the Gulch ultimately led the team to Chicago's Field Museum and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

In this book, Fred M. Blackburn and Ray A. Williamson tell the two intertwined stories of the early archaeological expeditions into Grand Gulch and the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Research Project. In the process, they describe what we now know about Basketmaker culture and present a stirring plea for the preservation of our nation's priceless archaeological heritage. Lavishly illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #683924 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 196 pages

Jonathan Haas, Museum Anthropolgy
The volume will be of interest to anyone studying the history of archaeology in the U.S. as well as to the wide range of researchers, professional and avocational alike.

Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
An aesthetically pleasing, popular treatment of early North American archaeology. bsolutely stunning color photographs.

About the Author
Fred M. Blackburn, a natural historian, educator, and environmental and cultural interpreer, was a key member of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Research Project. Ray A. Williamson is a scientist and writer who studies the astronomical lore and ritual practices of the Navajo and Pueblo Indians.

Customer Reviews

Cowboys and Cave Dwellers
A superb book. Very informative, well written, and filled with great photos. I recommend this book, for what that's worth.

A great book
Grand Gulch country is some of the best in the Southwest. A unique canyon that winds its way down to the San Juan river it also boasts an amazing array of cave sites of ancient Native American dwellings. Some are larger than others, containing houses and artifacts. Many have been harmed by exposure to people. Nevertheless because many are far up into the cliffs they have been well preserved. This book tells the tale of a numerb of items taken from the caves that then became useless to archeology because people did not know from whence they came. THe story examines the history of the attempt to reconnect them to their origins and thus help archeology understand the history of the American SOuthwest. It is both the history of early American archeology and this unique canyon and its off-shoots. A wonderful book.

Seth J. Frantzman

Vindication for Wetherills
I appreciated this book, not just for the fantastic illustrations and stories, but for improving the reputation of the Wetherills, long considered no-good cowboy pot hunters. A great companion to this books is In Search of the Old Ones by David Roberts, in which Fred Blackburn features largely as a revolutionary who shapes Roberts' thinking about the mess each generation of southwestern archeologists passes on to the next.