Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Sometimes one enters a book with preconceived ideas that get in the way of a complete appreciation of its contents. Such was this reviewer's experience with Ruth Van Dyke's treatment of the meaning of Anasazi architecture at what many consider the capital of that culture in and around the great sites of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. One aspect that contributed to this conflict between this reviewer's ideas and that presented by the book is the subtitle of the book: "Landscape and Ideology at the Center Place." Center Place can mean political and cultural center, which presents no problems with our concepts of Chaco Canyon. Ideology implies cultural meaning. Landscape usually refers to the terrain in general. Entering this book this reviewer was interested in how the terrain of Chaco Canyon would reveal the ideology of the Anasazi people. Instead the book focuses almost exclusively on Anasazi architecture. Now, in all fairness to Ms. Van Dyke, it is the architecture, primarily, we have that inspires our imagination about how the Anasazi lived. That is what has always drawn this reviewer to write about and study the Anasazi. Because the book focuses so exclusively on the architecture, the reader gets lost in the minutiae of Van Dyke's descriptions of archaeological sites attempting to present the evolution of Anasazi thought.
Repository Citation
Huffman, Bennett. "Review of The Chaco Experience: Landscape and Ideology at the Center Place, by Ruth Van Dyke." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 9, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–3. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol9/iss1/17