House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest | 
| Author: Craig Childs
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 23848
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.7
ISBN: 0316608173
Dewey Decimal Number: 978.98201
EAN: 9780316608176
ASIN: 0316608173
Publication Date: February 22, 2007
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Product Description
A feat of historical detection--the most significant, andcertainly the most enthralling, book on American prehistory to appear indecades.The greatest "unsolved mystery" of the American Southwest relates to theAnasazi, the native peoples who by the 11th century converged on ChacoCanyon (now New Mexico) and built a flourishing cultural center thatattracted pilgrims from far and wide, a vital crossroads of the prehistoricworld. The Anasazis' accomplishments--in agriculture, in art, in commerce,in architecture and engineering--were astounding, rivaling those of theMayans in distant Central America. By the 13th century, however, the Anasazi were gone from Chaco. Vanished.What was it--drought? pestilence? war? forced migration? mass murder orsuicide? Craig Childs draws on scholarly research and a lifetime ofadventure and exploration in the American Southwest to pursue the mysteryof their disappearance. Considering many possibilities, he points the wayto a new understanding of how a vibrant civilization collapsed.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Highly informative, yet far from perfect April 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am glad I read HOUSE OF RAIN and I can easily recommend it to others interested in the "Anasazi" (the controversy over this name is discussed at some length in the book) and related peoples of the Southwest. Nonetheless, I am somewhat ambivalent about this book, more so than with many I have read.
On the plus side, HOUSE OF RAIN probably is the most comprehensive non-academic book dealing with the Anasazi and related peoples I have encountered, and one of the most readable. It traces the Anasazi and their extensive archaeological record from Chaco in New Mexico, north to Aztec and Mesa Verde, then west to the Utah canyonlands, then south to Kayenta and Antelope Mesa in Arizona, further south to the Mogollon Rim along the New Mexico/Arizona border, and even further south into the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Childs discusses in a non-pedantic fashion quite a few of the theories about the Anasazi, their way of life, their artistic, engineering, and organizational/political accomplishments, and their ultimate fate. Moreover, he is to be commended for not being deterred by political correctness from discussing such matters as cannibalism, warfare and slavery, ritual violence, and dementia and hallucinations induced by an exclusively corn-based diet. Nonetheless, he clearly is highly respectful of the Anasazi, and he communicates a sense of wonder and awe.
On the other hand, certain aspects of the book are annoying or distracting, at least to me. Foremost among them is the author's overly "personal" narrative, all-too-generously sprinkling the book with anecdotes from his travels through the Southwest as he tracks the Anasazi. I recognize that he wants to establish his credentials and also to avoid a dry, academic tone, but many of his anecdotes are banal in the extreme (for example, many of the interactions between he and fellow travellers or he and his family). Childs also too frequently lapses into sappiness or melodrama, leading me to fear that perhaps his account may be overly imaginative, too much the product of a romantic mind bent on understanding and explaining where anything close to absolute understanding and explanation simply is not possible. Finally, given the numerous accounts of large, carefully engineered and built structures, even cities, many of which were occupied for only a few decades, I would have appreciated some discussion of how these massive construction projects were accomplished.
Despite the (to me) annoying flaws of HOUSE OF RAIN, the book is highly informative, definitely worth reading, and probably worth returning to.
 Wonderful, beautiful introduction to the Anasazi March 30, 2008
_House of Rain_ by Craig Childs is a beautiful account of the Anasazi, native peoples of the American Southwest and northern Mexico that built magnificent stone buildings and cliff settlements between 1000 BC and 1300 AD, the author describing what is known of their culture as well as their eventual fate, as culture that is recognizably Anasazi largely ended in the 1300s. It also a wonderful tribute to the great natural beauty of the canyons, mountains, and wildlife of the region, as the author is clearly an avid naturalist, his descriptions of desert scenery quite vivid, almost poetic. It also has a little action, the author describing experiences such as fording a river at flash flood, and of scaling (and later descending) airy precipices to reach remote ruins.
The book is really a travelogue, as the author travels through the lands of the region, journeying from the earliest Anasazi ruins across the U.S. and Mexico to the ruins of some of their descendents, describing in picturesque detail such fascinating sites as Chaco Canyon (New Mexico), Mesa Verde (Colorado), Kinishba (Arizona), and Paquime (Mexico). Along the way he has many asides about Anasazi life, the history of the study of these peoples, and interviews with many researchers.
So who were the Anasazi? First of all, I should note something about names. Though Anasazi is still a widely used name (and the name most used by the author) it is not really a correct name. It is a corruption of a Navajo word that basically means "enemy ancestor" (many erroneously suppose it to mean "old ones"); it turns out that in the 1800s many Navajo were paid to excavate ruins in the Southwest and that was the name that they gave to this culture (the Navajo by the way did not reach the Southwest until the sixteenth century). The Hopi, who are descended from the Anasazi, prefer the term Hisatsinom, but the name entering more common usage is Ancestral Puebloan.
Both terms describe not an ethnicity but actually a way of life (as excavations have shown that several different ethnic groups inhabited Anasazi ruins and exhibited Anasazi cultural traits simultaneously). The Anasazi were dryland farmers (principally of corn), hunters, and wild-plant gatherers who lived in complex kinship groups, sometimes in cities, other times in a much more sparsely populated, rural setting. They produced vast amounts of pottery (much of it crunches underfoot when trekking through remote canyons and farmers in many areas, notably in Mexico, routinely turn up mounds of broken remains), much of it black-and-white pottery (the most widespread style) with bold geometric designs on them. They constructed stone buildings from local materials and were known for masonry architecture in their later years. Some of these buildings could be quite impressive; some the tallest structures in North America until the advent of the skyscraper, while others were awe-inspiring for being situated on remote, nearly inaccessible rocks jutting out of the desert or in caves overlooking canyons (commonly referred to as cliff dwellings though the more accurate term is alcove structure).
Most ruins were emptied long ago by native peoples themselves (who often deliberately set fire to structures, sometimes as an act of war, often as a part of rituals when a site was abandoned), the elements, or unfortunately pothunters. As a result, architectural traits are one of the ways the Anasazi are best known. One of the most prominent was the kiva. Varying greatly in size (from a small bedroom to over 80 feet across), most are circular structures (though some are D-shaped or rectangular), usually subterranean or built deeply within a masonry superstructure, having encircling interior benches, built-in ventilation systems, and a small hole or dish built just off the center of the floor known as a sipapu, said to be a passage to the underworld. They were used as ritual and community spaces, the smaller ones used by family groups, the larger ones by entire communities.
Another noteworthy feature was the use of the T-shape in many of their doorways (a shape also seen in wall niches and in painted pottery). Though the T-shape also appears with the Maya and the Incans, the T-shape is especially prevalent with the Anasazi. Perhaps having begun as a functional shape, maybe allowing people to enter rooms with loads on their backs or to aid in the ventilation of large houses, it is thought that the form came to have deep symbolic meaning, perhaps identifying a room as a privileged place or as a ceremonial chamber.
Some sites did yield significant artifacts. In addition to pottery and delicate remains of woven materials, the Anasazi were apparently keen in importing and raising birds for ceremonial uses, notably raptors, songbirds, and waterfowl. Many of their bones were found to be deformed, indicating the cramped, sunless conditions in which they were kept. The two most popular were the macaw (which were bred in rows of pens at Paquime) and the turkey (which was used throughout the Americas as a substitute for human sacrifice and their feathers made into garments).
Some researchers have spent years uncovering what they called the ritual or georitual landscape of the Anasazi, how many of their structures line up with various celestial events as they placed buildings and lines of sights with natural features so that noteworthy sun and moon rises would line up in certain ways. They built great roads through the desert, wider and straighter than they needed to be, visible for many miles, lining up buildings, canyons, and even the centers of the largest kivas in flawlessly straight lines that went hundreds of miles. Taking advantage of these placements, with many settlements visible to one another through the mountains and deserts, the Anasazi maintained systems of signal fires (and during the day used mirrors), which allowed communities throughout the Southwest to relay messages back and forth.
Much is covered in this book, including successor cultures like the Salado and controversial issues such as cannibalism among the Anasazi.
House of Rain February 9, 2008
I learned more from this book in the two weeks it took me to read it than I did in the past 40 years of personal tramping around the southwest states. It has me now started on several research projects. WOW is the best single word to describe the book.
Craig Childs strikes again January 21, 2008
I can be quite critical at times, but find little to negatively criticize about this book. I loved Child's book about water, too, but ... this one ... I absolutely like. I have an interest in history, including of the "native Amerindians" and find this one exceptional. He is so sensitive in a sensual way that not only does he tell "the cut and dry" of it all, but fills in the gaps with the senses of having been there in time and space. I know it's not all "science," but "science" usually has much more "conjecture" to it than this.
Brilliant Overview of a Complex Topic December 1, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Living near Four Corners country, I've often felt that the makers of Chaco are still a ghostly presence, haunting conversations, land use policies, wilderness... I think it's the overwhelming evidence that something big happened here, for hundreds of years, and that it's no longer happening. It's hard not to look around at the big things we're doing, and shiver; in the end, the desert always wins.
House of Rain is by far the best and most accessible book available for those interested in the Anasazi and Chaco Culture (and Craig explains why these are loaded and not necessarily helpful terms). An expert on the subject himself, with his own ideas, he humbly takes the reader on a tour of the evidence and other theories, and in some of the book's finest passages he literally travels in the footsteps of the migratory people responsible for the imposing ruins that still inspire awe around here.
As for the previous reviewer, the kindest assumption I can make is that she didn't get past the dust jacket. House of Rain is, in fact, the single best argument against the simplistic view of the Anasazi that she claims to be upset about. Perhaps she should, you know, give it a read.
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