The Ancestral Puebloan Primer

Book excerpt: While Europe was locked in its "dark ages," the Ancestral Puebloans created a society that endured for almost a thousand years. Their descendants maintain centuries-old traditions and this compact book provides concise, authoritative answers to the most important questions about them: Who they were and why they are sometimes called the "Anasazi;" What they ate and how they survived in the harsh environment; Why they built great pueblos, magnifcent cliff dwellings, and vast road networks; What shattered pots and broken stone tools tell us about them; How specialists decipher rock art and what common symbols mean; Why they abandoned their farmsteads and magnificent stone cities; How archaeologists solved the "mystery" of their "disappearance"; and Where their descendants live.