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Accepted Paper:

Rethinking Chaco: lessons from 'across the pond'  
Claire Halley (University of Cambridge)

Paper short abstract:

Chaco Canyon, situated in the heart of the American southwest, has been an important testing ground for the development of method and theory in American archaeology for over 100 years. Currently there is a ‘quiet’ crisis in Chacoan archaeology. Using a case study drawing on practice and performance theories this paper argues that it is time for south-westerners to look ‘across the pond’ for inspiration to kick start this stalled research agenda.

Paper long abstract:

Chaco Canyon, situated in the heart of the American southwest, has been an important testing ground for the development of method and theory in American archaeology for over 100 years. Focusing on culture history and latterly on scientific, processual approaches archaeologists have produced voluminous amounts of literature yet, despite this prodigious research, the answers to key questions concerning the nature of Chacoan society; how it was organised, how it began and why it failed remain elusive. The data support a number of contradictory interpretations for the organising principles of Chaco e.g. inequitable/egalitarian, simple/complex, hierarchical/non-hierarchical, secular/religious and corporate/network. Lynne Sebastian (2006) notes that current research and debate is "bogged down in a whole variety of dichotomies".

This paper will begin by reviewing the reasons for this 'quiet' crisis in Chacoan archaeology. I suggest that the perceived hyper-relativism and anti-science approach of post processualism appears to have frightened off south-western archaeologists who remain resolutely scientific and processual in their approach to data, method and theory. I argue that it is time for south-westerners to look 'across the pond' for inspiration and consider the potential of interpretive and humanist approaches as a means of kick starting a stalled research agenda. To demonstrate the potential of this approach I present a case study drawing on practice and performance theories to consider the nature of power and its expression in the early developmental stages of Chacoan society.

Panel S10
The forgotten continent? Theorizing North America for UK-based researchers
  Session 1