From the Director | May 2008

Myths are beliefs about the past that both validate the present and entertain and teach new generations about social values and religious concepts. Myths can be fanciful, entertaining, or heartfelt expressions of religious belief. Since archaeologists work to try to understand the past, we can find ourselves in conflict with the myths or oral traditions of modern communities. When that happens, we are uncomfortable at best, even to the point of borrowing the medical admonition of “do no harm” in our writings and talks.

Things get interesting when the myths we confront are archaeological myths, beliefs that archaeologists hold about the past that are almost reflexively accepted. One such myth has touched the OAS staff over the past few months—the “mystery of the Anasazi.” Generations of archaeologists have noted the coincidence of the abandonment of the Mesa Verde region with an increase in Rio Grande population, assuming that Mesa Verde people accounted for a significant proportion of that increase. This belief persists despite repeated investigations that have failed to discover any significant trace of those migrants within Rio Grande sites. Generations of archaeologists have looked in vain, including our Laboratory of Anthropology predecessors such as H. P. Hera, Bertha Dutton, Charlie Steen, Fred Wendorf, and Stewart Peckham. These and other Rio Grande archaeologists have questioned the story of migration and colonization by Mesa Verde peoples, but the idea persists and continues to shape research and models of Southwestern prehistory.

In February I was invited to contribute to a symposium at the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, Arizona. The symposium was on the abandonment of the Mesa Verde region, with a secondary theme of the movement of Mesa Verde populations into the Rio Grande. The participants in the symposium ranged from the cream of the young crop of archaeologists to some of the sages of our field. However, what I heard was diametrically opposed to the long-term research results of the OAS staff—we have no evidence of any significant Mesa Verdean migration into the Northern Rio Grande Valley. Because the Mesa Verde migration idea is so ingrained, powerful, and seductive, it qualifies as myth. But this is one time that OAS archaeologists are not the least bit restrained by the aforementioned admonition. The staff is currently working on a book chapter that, we hope, will clear away misconceptions and lay a new foundation for this era of Southwestern prehistory.