Star Lake Archaeological Project

These fifteen essays inventory and evaluate the cultural resources discovered at the Star Lake Archaeological Research Project in northwestern New Mexico. Commissioned by the Peabody Coal Company to evaluate resources in a strip-mining area, the project turned up remains from the preceramic, Anasazi, and historic periods.

The book is divided into three parts, the first of which provides background, with es­says by Walter Wait and Neal Lopinot. Part two presents chapters by Wait, Joseph K. Anderson, and Terry J.Powell. Part three contains five chapters dealing with the Ana­sazi period written by Wait, Terry Klein, Anna Pauline Fondaw, David Barde, and Fred York.

This book isdesigned as a text in courses dealing with contract archaeology, with the application of archaeological method and theory, and with archaeological field tech­niques. The essays show archaeologists ap­plying some of the newest methods and theoretical techniques, not in an academic setting, but on the job where they worked as archaeologists. In Wait’s terms the book utters a challenge: “Be imaginative, be cre­ative, be archaeologists.”

Walter K. Wait was Field and Laboratory Director at the Star Lake Project.

Ben A. Nel­son is Assistant Director, Office of Contract Archaeology, the University of New Mexico.