Letters et cetera

Steve Plog, Commonwealth Professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Anthropology, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Election to the academy is among the highest distinctions for a scientist and is based on outstanding and ongoing achievements in original research. The 72 new members chosen on May 1 bring the total number to 2,025; the number of foreign associates, with the election of 18 new members, totals 387.

Plog, who joined the U.Va. anthropology department as an assistant professor in 1978, is an archaeologist whose work focuses on understanding cultural change among prehistoric cultures in the American Southwest. His research on the Chaco Canyon region of northwestern New Mexico has changed several long-accepted ideas about early Native American peoples, ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni and Rio Grande Pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico, and what led to massive population shifts near the end of the 13th century.

The academy, a nonprofit organization of scientists and engineers established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, is an honorific society dedicated to the advancement of science for the general welfare. The academy acts in an official advising capacity to the federal government in any matter involving science or technology.

Letters

I believe that the culture that left the old structures at Chaco Canyon is alive today; we know the people as Pueblo Indians. That culture celebrated the tricentennial of the most successful uprising against white tyranny ever done by a Native American/American Indian confederacy with the Tricentennial Run of 1980. That run is the subject of the book “Indian Running: Native American History & Tradition” by Peter Nabokov. That book would have been a good addition to the “Further Reading” section in the article “Chaco” in the Arts & Sciences magazine. Unfortunately, it may be now out of print.

Also “Further Reading” should have considered mentioning one of the excellent books by Joe S. Sando such as “Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History.” Joe Sando is a Pueblo member, I believe from Jemez. He may be associated with the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Finally I must mention that I believe that the Navaho had nothing to do with the building of the ancient grand pueblos such as the ones at Chaco and that the word “Anasazi” (which may be derived from a Navaho word) may be considered somewhat disrespectful by some of the people of the Southwest.

David Powell (College ’74)

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