I must complain about the article “What Happened To
The Anasazi?” (HCN, 10/3/05: Out of the Four Corners) on two
points. The first point is that the subject matter hardly qualifies
as news. No great, truly new discoveries were reported, nor was any
compelling, new explanation for the “mystery” of the
Anasazis’ abandonment of these sites given.
Second,
the way Susan Ryan’s work is portrayed in this article
borders on the lunatic fringe of archaeology, which seems to have a
much larger, fluffier fringe than a lot of other sciences. The
“emotional map” in her head, “the snakes” and the other
new-age-type fluff attributed to Ryan is as close to “going native”
as it gets in the world of archaeology.
Just because
sites are ritually vacated in what would appear to be a
non-emergency manner (a fact hardly anyone disputes) does not mean
that there wasn’t an overriding environmental cause for the
mass exodus. Agriculture-based civilizations that over-shoot their
resources and then collapse due to the ensuing social disruptions,
often coupled with drought, is a scenario repeated throughout the
world in the archaeological record.
Terri
Miner
Rock Springs, Wyoming
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The ‘fluffy fringe’ of archaeology.
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