The Chaco Meridian: Centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest

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Summary: No Dry Bones Here
Review: "The Chaco Meridian" is informative, thought-provoking, controversial and (surprise!) fun to read. I didn't know you were allowed to use puns in a scientific work. One warning though; this isn't a primer. It would be very helpful to have some background first, perhaps Linda Cordell's "Archaeology of the Southwest."

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Summary: A huge step forward in southwest U.S. archaeology
Review: A thought provoking book that in a subtle fashion entertains as well as compels the reader to turn the page for the next surprise. Yet, Leskon's case for an elite Pueblo group makes sense if one can forget or put aside the static approach to previous Pueblo research. Leskon mixes and stirs data that has been available for years and in the end wraps it into a package that attempts to describe the Pueblo culture through time rather than a series of start and stop/boom and bust cultures. Finally, someone steps forward and takes a chance. The mechanics of the Chaco, Aztec, Paquime sequence is nicely presented and a strong case is made, yet the story leaves one hanging with respect to the whys, and where did it all begin and end. Includes a surprising and good comparison with the Mississippian culture, albeit short (perhaps the subject of another book). Thank you for the good read!

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Summary: A strong challenge to the orthodox portrayal of Chaco
Review: An excellent book for both students and professional archaeologists interested in the prehistory of the Southwest. His analysis of the Chaco outliers leads to a new formulation for the role of "downtown Chaco." Be prepared for the concept of a "Chaco Hegemony" based upon the outliers - a wonderful explanation. He integrates Pueblo oral history to add color to his model. Easy to read. Highly recommended.

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Summary: A review from Amazon UK
Review: [e-mail] from Virginia, USA , 21 May, 1999 Provides provocative new views of the Anasazi culture A book that breaks the mold of most published archaeology literature. "The Chaco Meridian" takes an entertaining world view approach to the Anasazi culture, building a case for long distance interaction between Chaco, Paquime and further south into Mexico. Lekson presents information in a way that is refreshing and thought provoking (the book was difficult to put down once I began to read). Lekson discusses architectural and archaeological relationships that appear to be very obvious, yet he is one of the first to openly package Chaco, Aztec, Paquime and the general southwestern US into a common culture, and make these ideas available to the general public. There are no geopolitcal or academic borders in this book. Thanks for the good reading !

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Summary: a review from an archaeologist
Review: Lekson's book the Chaco meridian is an entertaining read for those who are previously aquainted with southwestern puebloan archaeology. The book does well to keep the reader engrossed but as one hits the last few chapters you may wonder where the jokes left and the SAA conference began. It does provide an interesting perspective that could be used for further reasearch in the connection of ancient puebloan sites. Overall a fairly decent text, but simply unacceptable for the neophyte to this field of study.

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Summary: Entertaining and largely persuasive big picture archeology
Review: Lekson, an expert on Southwestern archaeology, presents a provocative thesis about the civilization that produced the great houses in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon. He proposes that Chaco Canyon was one of three successive capitals of a politically integrated region. According to Lekson, a ruling elite emerged at Chaco and perpetuated itself by moving a ceremonial city along Chaco's meridian. Lekson writes in an engaging and often deliberately provocative style. This is as fun as serious archaeology gets, though Lekson sometimes repeats his points. The book is well illustrated with diagrams and black and white photographs.

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Summary: Destined to become a classic in Southwestern Archaeology!
Review: Once every generation or so a new work appears that radically changes how we perceive some aspect of the world, by tying together a vast amount of information in a new and enlightening framework. The Chaco Meridian brings to southwestern archaeology what the Alvarez hypothesis did for paleontology: a truly revolutionary yet at the same time fully believable framework for understanding the development of three of the region's greatest centers, Chaco Canyon, Aztec, and Casas Grandes/Paquime. It will have the same impact on southwestern archaeology that the comet had on the dinosaurs... sweeping away a lot of old ideas, and serving as a topic for research and debate for a generation to come. The Chaco Meridian is, furthermore, a truly fun read, one of the few archaeology books I have looked at in a long time that I found almost impossible to put down. It is also one of the finest examples of cutting edge thinking and lucid writing directed to the exploration of an archaeological problem you will ever see, told in an engaging and often humorous style that will engage the educated public as well as the professional archaeological community. You have to particularly admire someone who can cite all the traditional archaeological authorities (sometimes while turning their ideas on their head), and at the same time bring in quotes from such non-traditional sources as Babe, Firesign Theater, and Casablanca. I kept turning the pages as much to see what Lekson would say next, and how he would say it, as I did to follow the argument! I have only had my copy for a week, yet have already talked about it to just about every professional colleague I have met, as well as to several of my neighbors... the book one of those "paradigm-shifting" events in archaeology that happen so infrequently that they are a real thrill to see when they occur. It is a fun yet thoughtful and thought-provoking book, a must read for anyone interested in modern archaeology.

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Summary: Like a seminar that never ends
Review: Steve Lekson has created a book of immense power and importance that is both a challenge to current archaeological thinking and a pleasure to read! If Lekson's precepts are correct, then a major new chapter in Southwestern archaeology has just opened. Although I must disagree with many of his view points (I am "a remarkably, even perverse" (p.45) archaeologist and one of the perpetrators of the "Chaco is a Dairy Queen Outlier" bumper stickers (p.28), the book challenges even my Mesa Verdean sensabilities (Steve once called me a "like-minded heritic" so I expect that he would expect me to disagree with him along the line, as heretics do!). In short, I am not a Chacoanist and am sceptical of all things Chaco. Yet reading Lekson's new work is stimulating, and almost made a believer out of a stodgy old Mesa Verdean like me! Highly recommended, useful, energetic, and MAYBE correct!

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Summary: Synthesizing the Southwest
Review: What marvelous ideas are incorporated into this model of a regional ideological "plan" for the prehistoric SW! As a teacher who regularly takes my classes to Casas Grandes, I would applaud Lekson; and take those to task who chop the Mimbres off at the NM/Mex. border--the strong presence of Mimbres as far south as Casas & vicinity is another strong point in favor of Lekson's idea. The mark of a really good hypothesis is that it makes one THINK long after the reading is done. I still find myself, months after the first reading, pondering the linguistic implications: was there a "lingua franca" for the SW in which this meridian-if it existed-was the "noon sun line" (the "central place" in the SW region)? The sun dagger at Chaco might back that up. If so, was the edge of the Plains the "sunrise boundary" and the Pacific the "sunset boundary? Is it even possible that, along with cognitive maps to get from central Mexico to the 4 Corners, the ancients actually understood that the watersheds flowed east OR west from this general meridian?? Wow. Lekson has been decades in formulating the concept; lets hope it is taken further. We constantly need reminded that sites aren't isolated; they belonged to much greater cultures--Lekson is a thinker with the big picture.

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Summary: Lekson Captures the Moment, 900 Years Later
Review: Wow! In thirty years of Southwest archaeology and Chaco literature, Stephen Lekson has written the best treatise on what may be (or was) called the Chaco Phenomenum.

Well researched and presented conversationally, Lekson clearly outlines the evidence for a pan-Southwest Chacoan influence. Lekson speaks as colleague might, visiting in your home, sitting before the fireplace creating a logical system for "Chacoan hegemony". Air castles among friends.

Never be misled by Lekson's wordplay, "...the political structure of the Greater Southwest was a case of macaws and effect." It is his way of gently exposing an embarassing blindspot in the thinking of the old "Wise Men" of archaeology. Likewise his metaphor that "feathers are fluff compared to real stuff..." is a way of re-introducing the reader to the real significance of exotics.

Lekson echoes a Smithsonian Institute remark that the "history of the human race can be summed in the phrase, 'When do we eat?'" (Lekson, discussing Chaco as a redistribution center for surplus, "Beyond the Basin, local networks presumably took care of the perennial local problen: What's for dinner?)

Finally, Lekson is a master of the apt metaphor - "If Chaco is the bete noire of the Southwest, (Pueblo) Bonito is the the black hole. It sucks in astonishing amounts of interest, enegy, and resources..."

This book, like Bonito, will suck you in. Unquestionable the best read on Southwestern Archaeology since Wormington.