FIELD NOTES from walking Chaco with Anna’s colleagues, the self-deprecating wizard-cowboy-archaeologists Richard Friedman and Rob Weiner.
Is this as sacred as Stonehenge, the pyramids?
Rich: Easily as sacred, yes.
We come from the Western tradition where the notions of sacred and profane are separate, but there’s this idea of power in the landscape, power in the sun and the moon, power in the waters, power in the astronomy, power in certain people, power in songs, power to make things happen. In some places on the earth, this is more accessible, denser.
Certain people have the ability to work with that power, to wire it up. That stuff is inherently in the earth and constructions can augment pre-existing power. It’s palpable to anyone who comes here. Anna and I were talking on the way, saying that most sober-minded, scientific, button-down types come to Chaco and say there is something going on here. These are not spiritual, new age, woo-woo people. Everybody feels it.
Rob picks up a pea-sized red stone.
Rich: This was a stone called pasteur. They made arrowheads out of this. This was a piece of these mountains, an incredibly sensorial colored stone. Touch freely, but don’t take it. Don’t take anything you find here. There have been consequences for those that do.
Rob makes an offering with a little pouch.
As an academic, why would you make an offering?
Rob: Because these places are alive. I need to give a gift. My life is about reciprocity and you can’t just take, you have to give back
Rich: You have to respect the voice of the people who once lived here. We’re trying to break down the dogma that has persisted with this place and replace it with the human story of honoring the people that were here and their descendants.
Rob: For these people, the landscape is alive, the sky is alive, the water is alive. And the three of us have an unconscious need to see what’s here, to see it and understand it, not read about it in a book.
Rich: In certain archaeological circles, there is resistance to looking at the human aspect. We like black and white, but there is a lot of gray – it’s there, and we don’t understand that we can’t do that in our culture.
There’s a Native saying: If you should know, you will. If you shouldn’t, you won’t.