Lynne Sebastian

Tracking Ancient Footsteps celebrates William D. Lipe's five-decade career in Southwestern and conservation archaeology. From the arid expanses of Glen Canyon, the Red Rock Plateau, and Cedar Mesa in Utah, to the relatively lush Dolores Valley and Mesa Verde regions of Colorado, Lipe participated in the key projects defining much of what is known today about the ancient Native American past in the Southwest. And, in 1974, he provided a timely definition for "public archaeology" that influences researchers and land managers to the present time. In Tracking Ancient Footsteps, nine of his close colleagues share their experiences, providing a chronology of one man's life intersecting with our understanding of Southwestern Prehistory, the role of government land-holding agencies, and the archaeological profession as a whole.

In the tenth century AD, a remarkable cultural development took place in the harsh and forbidding San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. From small-scale, simply organised, prehistoric Pueblo societies, a complex and socially differentiated political system emerged which has become known as the Chaco Phenomenon. The origins, evolution, and decline of this system have long been the subject of intense archaeological debate. Lynne Sebastian examines the transition of the Chaco system from an acephelous society, in which leadership was situational and most decision making carried out within kinship structures, to a hierarchically organised political structure with institutional roles of leadership. She argues that harsh enviromental factors were not the catalyst for the transition, as has previously been thought. Rather, the increasing political complexity was a consequence of improved rainfall in the region which permitted surplus production, thus allowing those farming the best land to capitalise on the material success. By combining information on political evolution with archaeological data and the results of a computer simulation, she is able to produce a sociopolitically based model of the rise, florescence, and decline of the Chaco Phenomenon.