Seeking the Center Place: The Mesa Verde Cultural Landscape and Pueblo Indian Homeland

FAIN: BH-50317-09

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Inc. (Cortez, CO 81321-9408)
Marjorie R. Connolly (Project Director: March 2009 to June 2011)

Two one-week workshops for eighty school teachers on the archaeology and history of the Pueblo people in the Mesa Verde region.

Seeking the Center Place is a one-week residence-based workshop for four groups of 20 school teachers. The workshop focuses on: 1) the importance of the landmarks in the Mesa Verde archaeological region, 2) the deep history and enduring vitality of Pueblo Indian people, and 3) the critically important but neglected subject matter, America's excluded past. The workshop is significant because it offers school teachers an unequaled opportunity to trace the history of one of the continent's most enduring cultural groups--Pueblo Indians--from their ancient past into the 21st century. The workshop's intellectual scope is regional, but it will focus on three specific historic landmarks: the Goodman Point Unit of Hovenweep National Monument, Sand Canyon Pueblo in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, and Mesa Verde National Park--all among the world's greatest archaeological treasures and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.