Location: Upstairs Conference Room of the Udall Building, 725 Camino Lejo
Cost: $15 Member/$20 Not-yet-Member
This lecture will review recent archaeological findings from Chaco Canyon and associated sites in the Four Corners region with special emphasis on Chacoan roads. These monumental avenues are associated with Chacoan ceremonial architecture and challenge conventional notions of “roads” as corridors of trade and transportation. Why did the Chacoans construct these features, and what was their role within Chacoan culture? Combining evidence from archaeology, anthropology, Native traditions, psychology, and comparative examples across the ancient world, the instructor will describe some of the religious, ideological, political, and symbolic dimensions of Chaco roads and their role in supporting a large regional society of the ancient Southwestern past.
About your Instructor: Rob Weiner (B.A. & M.A., Brown University) is a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research combines diverse interests in archaeology, rituals and religions, cross-cultural analysis, mythology and oral traditions, structuralism, archaeoastronomy, and psychology to study the ancient Chaco culture of the American Southwest. Rob’s work has been published in top peer-reviewed journals including American Antiquity, and he has conducted archaeological field work in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Rhode Island, and Turkey. Rob also holds a position as a Research Fellow with the Solstice Project, and as a Research Affiliate at Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.