The Sand Canyon Archaeological Project: A Progress Report

by William D. Lipe (Editor)

The Sand Canyon Project is a continuing interdisciplinary study of the Pueblo Indian occupation of southwestern Colorado, focusing on the period A.D. 1150-1300. Working in a field area approximately fifteen miles northwest of Mesa Verde National Park, project archaeologists are investigating two classic problems in Puebloan archaeology; the shift from dispersed upland settlement to large, canyon-oriented pueblos and the rapid abandonment of the northern San Juan area in the late A.D. 1200's. Survey results, intensive and test excavations at selected sites (including Sand Canyon Pueblo), a study of agricultural productivity during the late Pueblo period, and an oral history of twentieth-century homesteading are among the topics reported in this monograph.

145 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

William D. Lipe is an archaeologist with expertise in the North American Southwest, archaeological method and theory, and cultural resource management. His Ph.D. (Yale 1966) was based on fieldwork in the Glen Canyon area of southeastern Utah. Subsequent major field projects have included work in the Cedar Mesa region of Utah and the Dolores region of southwestern Colorado. Since the 1980s, he has collaborated with archaeologists at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado on studies of Pueblo settlement patterns, community organization, and socio-cultural change in the Northern San Juan region of Colorado and Utah. Prior to joining the WSU faculty in 1976, Dr. Lipe was Assistant Director of the Museum of Northern Arizona, and Assistant and Associate Professor at Binghamton University in New York. From 1995 to 1997, he was President of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). He regularly taught a graduate course titled Introduction to Archaeological Method and Theory (ANTH 530) for many years. He was recognized with the WSU College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award in 1997, the John F. Seiberling Award from the Society of Professional Archaeologists in 1998, the SAA Distinguished Service Award in 2000, and the Byron Cummings Award from the Pecos Archaeological Conference in 2002.