Review of Cowboys and Cave Dwellers: Basketmaker Archaeology in Utah's Grand GULCH (Blackburn and Williamson, 1995) and Anasazi Basketmaker: Papers From The 1990 Wetherill - Grand Gulch Symposium (Bureau of Land Management 1993).

Abstract

Fred Blackburn and Roy Williamson provide a rather enjoyable, if narrowly focused, history of Basketmaker archae­ology in Cowboys and Cave Dwellers. Basketmaker Archaeology in Utah's Grand Gulch (1995). In this, the School of American Research Press has produced an aesthetically pleasing, popular treatment of early North American archaeology, of the same genre as Melinda Elliott's (1995) Great Excavations. Archaeologists who find the journalstic prose, paucity of data, and lack of citations in such popular accounts unsettling should turn to Anasazi Basketmaker: Papers From the 1990 Wetherill - Grand Gulch Symposium (Bureau of Land Management 1993). This predecessor yet companion volume contains the detail, background, and contextual information necessary to criti­cally evaluate the significant scholarly contributions of the Wetherill - Grand Gulch Research Project (1986 - 1990). Given that most readers of the Bulletin would like to see more than the popular account can offer, I have taken the liberty of reviewing both volumes.