Principal investigator
Stephen Lekson
Collaboration + support
National Park Service; Bureau of Land Management; USDA Forest Service; Fort Lewis College; Arizona State University; University of Arizona; University of New Mexico; The School of Advanced Research; Native American consultations
Archaeologist Stephen Lekson, a professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology, has taken a new look at an old site.听
That site is Chaco Canyon, a region of the southwestern United States that was home to ancestral Pueblo peoples from about 850 to 1150 A.D. Over his long career as an archaeologist, Lekson has argued that Chaco wasn鈥檛 a provincial hub, as other researchers have suggested. Instead, he believes it was the capital city to a thriving civilization with a region that may have contained 100,000 people at its height.听
Here, commoners toiled in corn fields while elites lived in great houses where they imported macaws from Mexico and drank cacao鈥攁ll before the region鈥檚 entire population suddenly moved away.听
鈥淚n any society, there are ups and downs and dead ends,鈥� Lekson said.
