This volume celebrates and examines the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center’s past, present, and future by providing a backdrop for the not-for-profit’s beginnings and highlighting key accomplishments in research, education, and American Indian initiatives over the past four decades. Specific themes include Crow Canyon’s contributions to projects focused on community and regional settlement patterns, human-environment relationships, public education pedagogy, and collaborative partnerships with Indigenous communities. Contributing authors, deeply familiar with the center and its surrounding central Mesa Verde region, include Crow Canyon researchers, educators, and Indigenous scholars inspired by the organization’s mission to further develop and share knowledge of the human past for the betterment of societies.
 
Research, Education, and American Indian Partnerships at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center guides Southwestern archaeology and public education beyond current practices—particularly regarding Indigenous partnerships—and provides a strategic handbook for readers into and through the mid-twenty-first century.
 
Open access edition supported by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center King Family Fund and subvention supported in part by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society.
 

Susan C. Ryan is the executive vice president of the Research Institute at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. An anthropological archaeologist, she has engaged in research, collaborative projects, and public education for almost three decades.
 

Contents
1. Forty Years of Integrating American Indian Knowledge, Public Education, and Archaeological Research in the Central Mesa Verde
Region, Susan C. Ryan
Part I: History of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center
2. The Early History of Crow Canyon’s Archaeology, Education, and American Indian Programs, Ricky R. Lightfoot and William D. Lipe
3. From DAP Roots to Crow Canyon and VEP Shoots: Some Recollections, Timothy A. Kohler, Ricky R. Lightfoot,
Part II: Indigenous Archaeology
4. The Pueblo Farming Project: Research, Education, and Native American Collaboration, Paul Ermigiotti, Mark D. Varien, Grant D. Coffey, R. Kyle Bocinsky, Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, and Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa
5. Place of the Songs: Hopi Connections to the Mesa Verde Region, Leigh Kuwanwisiwma and Wesley Bernardini
6. What the Old Ones Can Teach Us, Scott Ortman
7. The Knowledge Keepers: Protecting Pueblo Culture from the Western World, Joseph H. Suina
Part III: Archaeology and Public Education
8. Conceptualizing the Past: The Thoughtful Engagement of Hearts and Minds, M. Elaine Franklin
9. Making a Place for Archaeology in K–12 Education, Winona J. Patterson, M. Elaine Franklin, and Rebecca Hammond
Part IV: Community and Regional Studies
10. Community Development and Practice in the Basketmaker III Period: A Case Study from Southwestern Colorado, Kari Schleher, Shanna Diederichs, Kate Hughes, and Robin Lyle
11. Bridging the Long Tenth Century: From Villages to Great Houses in the Central Mesa Verde Region, Kellam Throgmorton, Richard Wilshusen, and Grant D. Coffey
12. Community Centers: Forty Years of Sustained Research in the Central Mesa Verde Region, Donna M. Glowacki, Grant D. Coffey, and Mark D. Varien
13. Community Organization on the Edge of the Mesa Verde Region: Recent Investigations at Cowboy Wash Pueblo, Moqui Springs Pueblo, and Yucca House, James M. Potter, Mark D. Varien, Grant D. Coffey, and R. Kyle Bocinsky
14. Formation and Composition of Communities: Material Culture and Demographics in the Goodman Point and Sand Canyon Communities, Kari Schleher, Samantha Linford, Grant D. Coffey, Kristin Kuckelman, Scott Ortman, Jonathan Till, Mark D. Varien, and Jamie Merewether
15. Lithic Analyses and Sociopolitical Organization: Mobility, Territoriality, and Trade in the Central Mesa Verde Region, Fumi Arakawa, Jamie Merewether, and Kate Hughes
16. Leaving Town: Similarities and Differences in Ancestral Pueblo Community Dissolution Practices in the Mesa Verde and Northern
Rio Grande Regions, Michael Adler and Michelle Hegmon
17. Bi-Walls, Tri-Walls, and the Aztec Regional System, Stephen H. Lekson
18. Revisiting the Depopulation of the Northern Southwest with Dendrochronology: A Changing Perspective with New Dates from
Cedar Mesa, Benjamin A. Bellorado and Thomas C. Windes
19. Thirteenth-Century Villages and the Depopulation of the Northern San Juan Region by Pueblo Peoples, Kristin Kuckelman
Part V: Human-Environment Relationship Research
20. The Exploitation of Rodents in the Mesa Verde Region, Shaw Badenhorst, Jonathan C. Driver, and Steve Wolverton
21. Fine-Grained Chronology Reveals Human Impacts on Animal Populations in the Mesa Verde Region of the American Southwest, Karen Gust Schollmeyer and Jonathan C. Driver
22. Forty Years of Archaeobotany at Crow Canyon and 850 Years of Plant Use in the Central Mesa Verde Region, Sarah E. Oas and Karen R. Adams
23. “Old Pots Make Me Think New Thoughts”: Reciprocity, Privilege, and the Practice of Southwestern Archaeology, Elizabeth Perry
Index
About the Authors