Southwestern Adventure: In the Footsteps of First Peoples; Mogollon, Hohokam, Salado and Sinagua

Royea (archaeology, Bishop’s Univ., Québec) complements his earlier guidebook to pre-Columbian Ancestral Puebloan sites in the Four Corners Region (The Grand Circle Tour) with this itinerary for visiting pre-Columbian sites in southwestern New Mexico and central and southern Arizona (including the Grand Canyon). Here, the region’s major prehistoric cultures (Hohokam, Mogollon, Sinagua, and Salado) flourished for centuries, created art and architecture, and farmed the desert. The tour is a bidirectional 14-day loop, with detailed directions to, and descriptions of, 41 archaeological sites; Royea also covers museums, indicates the difficulty of trails, and offers expansive historical context. The book concludes with a history of the region, beginning in the Paleo-Indian era. Royea includes almost 150 color photos, 19 site plans, 20 (rudimentary) maps, a glossary, and a bibliography. The writing is direct and clear, commenting on engineering, pottery, petroglyphs, and more. A culturally sensitive classicist, Royea packs a great deal of historical, archaeological, geological, anthropological, and practical information into this volume, while suggesting how best to use one’s time in the Southwest.