Warren wrote, had always been creaturesrn”of the small town and farm,” and agriculturernwas the “readiest and probablyrnsurest way” for blacks to establish themselvesrneconomically and socially.rnStack calls attention to a phenomenonrnthat deserves further study. Unfortunately,rnshe spends too much time inveighingrnagainst Southern racism andrnracial antagonism instead of examiningrnthe conflict between industrial andrnagrarian values, to which she appearsrnoblivious throughout her book.rnWilliam ]. Watkins, ]r., is the assistantrneditor of The Freeman.rnPaths of thernAncestorsrnby Gregory McNameernIn Search of the Old Onesrnby David RobertsrnNew York: Simon and Schuster;rn271 pp., $24.00rnOn a bright winter morning in 1907,rna rancher went searching for a lostrncalf deep in a labyrinthine canyon on thernColorado Plateau. Descending into arndraw so steep that his horse could notrnfollow, he stumbled upon an astonishingrnfind: Betatakin Ruin, a large cliffhouserncomplex that seems almost to hang inrnmidair before a sheer sandstone wall.rnWandering through the many rooms ofrnLIBERAL ARTSrnSPARING THE RODrnFollowing the example of Sweden,rnthe Italian government has outlawedrnthe spanking and slapping of childrenrnwho act up, Reuters reported in June.rnItaly’s highest court handed downrnthe ruling in the case of a gid whornhad been slapped by her father at agernten and had then complained to thernpolice. “Italian parents can no longerrnhit their children even if they think arnsmack is of educational value,”rnReuters reported.rnthe ruin, built late in the 13 th centuryrnA.D., he found dozens of baskets, pots,rnand preserved grains and ears of cornrnthat lay out on wooden benches as ifrnready to be eaten. It was, the rancher laterrnrecalled, almost as if its occupants hadrnbeen chased away in the middle of arnmeal.rnThe rancher’s discovery has excitedrngenerations of archaeologists, who havernsince elaborated a cultural history of thernAnasazi, Betatakin’s builders; as “lostrncivilizations” go, the Anasazi—the namernmeans “enemy ancestors” in Navajo—nornlonger hold much mystery. They werernan agricultural people with prodigiousrnskills as builders, the makers of vast citiesrnat Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, andrnCanyon de Chelly, and their eventualrndecline may have been produced byrntheir successes, when, having exhaustedrnthe forests and water sources of the aridrnplateau, they faced a decades-longrndrought. The great Anasazi cities fell,rnand their inhabitants dispersed to foundrnother, smaller settlements on the Hopirnmesas.rnThe library of anthropological writingsrnon the Anasazi is large. The libraryrnof good books for the general reader is farrnsmaller, however, and David Robertsrnadds to it substantially with In Search ofrnthe Old Ones. He takes the reader on arnclosely annotated but not overspecializedrntour of some enduring controversiesrnin the historical record, among them thernhaunting question of whether thernAnasazi committed acts of cannibalismrnin conjunction with warfare. (One day,rnsomeone will write a popular history ofrncannibalism, a subject that anthropologistsrnhave been furiously debating for thernlast three decades.) While he has hisrnown ideas about these matters, Robertsrnallows that we are unlikely ever to knowrnthe truth; as he writes, “archaeology at itsrnmost magisterial can only begin to elucidaternthe passions that grip the heart of arncivilization.”rnWhat passions drove the Anasazi werncan only guess at. Roberts has a fondnessrnfor iconoclastic interpretations, as well asrnfor the underdogs in the scholarly turfrnbattles that Southwestern archaeologistsrnwage with a vengeance. He argues, convincingly,rnthat amateur archaeologistrnRichard Wetherill, who discovered famousrnAnasazi sites like Cliff Palace andrnMesa Verde and who is generally regardedrnas little more than a tomb-robberrnof the sort familiar to readers of TonyrnHillerman’s novel A Thief of Time, was arnbetter interpreter of the Anasazi than hernis usually given credit for. Many ofrnWetherill’s supposedly mistaken analyses,rnRoberts asserts, are actually the faultrnof “museum staffs who later mishandledrnhis collections.” Claiming to have seenrninternal memoranda from those museumsrnadmitting that identification tagsrnhad been separated from their artifacts,rnRoberts makes a good case in defense ofrnthis long-reviled cowboy, who in fact wasrnone of the few Anglos ever to have madernhimself truly at home in the least-knownrnregion of the Southwest.rnRoberts is also a partisan of the contemporaryrnarchaeologist Stephen Lekson,rnwho maintains that Anasazi kivas—rnpit structures long thought to have had arnceremonial function—had only a domesticrnuse: a view that has angered manyrnscholars with a vested interest in the theoryrnthat the Anasazi were a highly ritualisticrnsociety. “On the unthinking assumptionrnthat kivas were ceremonial,”rnRoberts writes, “archaeologists had builtrncomplicated edifices, arguing, for instance,rnfrom the ration of living rooms tornkivas that certain sites were ceremonialrncenters serving far-ranging populations.”rnThe suggestion that kivas are littlernmore than breakfast nooks may upsetrnthe received tradition; also, as Robertsrnwryly notes, it makes the reconstructionrnof Anasazi daily life the more interesting.rnReaders with little interest in thernminutiae of prehistoric research will findrnRoberts’ accounts of travel in Anasazirncountry to be more accessible, as well asrnfilled with entertaining adventures. Arnhigh point is his descent into the littleexploredrn—and appropriately named—rnMystery Canyon along a “devious routernthat wound through and under giantrnhoodoos, poised like the pendulousrnomens of some delirious nightmare,”rnwhere he makes a few discoveries of hisrnown. Roberts’ descriptions are true tornthe place, and far more interesting tornread than the usual run of guidebooks—rnfew of whose authors have traveled, likernRoberts, by llama into the depths of therncanyonlands.rn”For all the pitiless rigor of that desertrnland,” Roberts writes, “the AnasazirnSouthwest forms the most compellingrnlandscape I know of in the world.” Hernhonors that landscape and its former inhabitantsrnwith this fine book.rnGregory McNamee’s latest hook is ThernSierra Club Desert Reader.rn30/CHRONlCLESrnrnrn
January 1975July 26, 2022By The Archive
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