The Lost World of the Old Ones

July 20, 2015
This rather puzzling book, a sequel of sorts to In Search of the Old Ones (1996), is a detailed guide to the archaeology of the American Southwest, particularly the areas inhabited by the Anasazi, or (in what Roberts terms "p.c." parlance) "Ancestral Puebloans." Roberts, a mountaineer and amateur archaeologist, received both praise and criticism for his earlier work, notably for the amount of attention it drew from visitors to Utah's Cedar Mesa site. In this followup, Roberts states that his goal is to offer readers an account of the most exciting and revealing research that has been produced about the region in the past 20 yearsâbut instead he includes only long-winded anecdotes about his fellow climbers, archaeologists, and colorful local characters. The book is awkwardly situated among the genres of travelogue, adventure story, and scholarly monograph; it is insufficiently dramatic to satisfy on the first two counts, and the lack of footnotes undermines its success on the third. Puzzlingly, the book's illustrations include neither maps nor photos of artifacts, such as the Telluride blanket, to whose discovery and interpretation Roberts devotes an entire chapter. Roberts's love for the Southwest and its precolonial cultures emerges clearly, but his execution in producing this book is far less successful.

April 1, 2015

Roberts (In Search of the Old Ones) returns to the American Southwest, bringing his experiences as a climber, traveler, and writer to the history of the Pueblo and Navajo peoples. Readers will follow the author into canyon country, hiking through pinyon-juniper stretches and scaling hidden alcoves. The text discusses important issues in anthropology, including archaeological preservation, the relationships of the natives to the historical landscape, and the complicated tensions between archaeologists and natives. Serious students of history and archaeology may glaze over the episodic adventurism, but the work succeeds in popularizing the often overly technical or inaccessible archaeological literature. Readers who are more interested in history than hiking may prefer Stephen Lekson's History of the Ancient Southwest. Nevertheless, Roberts has done his homework, and the book serves as an excellent literature review of Southwestern archaeology. In addition to examining common questions (e.g., Where did the Four Corners people go after the 13th century?), Roberts delves into less-charted territory, lending time to the Fremont culture and the Navajo leader Hoskinini. VERDICT Part history, part memoir, part excursion, this work is a great companion for scholar-adventurers.--Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA

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