Research Mission

In February 2009, Mark Varien presented "Life as Migration: The Mesa Verde Pueblo People—Who were they? Why did they leave? Where did they go?" at the Beckman Center, Irvine, CA.

View the hour-long video available in the Beckman Center Distinctive Voices archive.

 

Education Mission Crow Canyon Mission American Indian Initiatives Mission

It is through carefully designed and thoughtfully executed archaeological research that we learn about past societies unaffected by modern technologies and the global economy and, thus, about most of human history.

At the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, we conduct long-term, multidisciplinary research into agricultural societies of the southwestern United States. Because most people around the world lived in similar societies until relatively recently—and because most human cultural diversity developed in the context of such societies—the Center’s work contributes to our collective understanding of the broader human condition.

Crow Canyon’s research incorporates both historical and anthropological principles and methods. We reconstruct the centuries-long history of Pueblo Indian peoples, focusing on the prehispanic era in the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado. We then compare that history to the histories of other peoples around the world in an effort to understand how and why human cultures change.

The Center’s research is conducted in the context of public education programs in which students and adults actively participate in field and laboratory studies. American Indians, many of them descended from the peoples we study archaeologically, consult on, and contribute to, all facets of our research programs, and our staff collaborates with colleagues from many other disciplines to accomplish the Center’s research objectives. Together, we make discoveries about the human past that help us understand the present and shape our collective future.

Principles That Guide Our Work

• Archaeology is the social science that best allows us to examine the interactions between humans and their environments over long spans of time.
  
  
• Archaeology is the social science that best allows us to examine how history shapes individuals and how individuals, in turn, make history.
  
  
• Long-term research that integrates the work of many disciplines is needed to understand the human past.
  
  
• There are multiple ways of knowing the past, and research that combines archaeological knowledge with the traditional knowledge of Pueblo people provides a much richer and more inclusive understanding of long-term Pueblo history.
  
  
• Public participation in the study of the past promotes a greater appreciation for archaeology, anthropology, history, human diversity, and the need to preserve cultural resources.
  
  
• Crow Canyon’s research should contribute to the development of archaeological method and theory that is useful for social science and research worldwide.

Programs

Crow Canyon’s archaeology programs for the public include both field excavation and laboratory analysis. Working alongside professional archaeologists, students and adults participate directly in the research process, making a long-term contribution to our understanding of not only the Pueblo past, but of human history as a whole.