Backpacker brings the outdoors straight to the reader's doorstep, inspiring and enabling them to go more places and enjoy nature more often. The authority on active adventure, Backpacker is the world's first GPS-enabled magazine, and the only magazine whose editors personally test the hiking trails, camping gear, and survival tips they publish. Backpacker's Editors' Choice Awards, an industry honor recognizing design, feature and product innovation, has become the gold standard against which all other outdoor-industry awards are measured.

An award-winning author and veteran mountain climber takes us deep into the Southwest backcountry to uncover secrets of its ancient inhabitants. In this thrilling story of intellectual and archaeological discovery, David Roberts recounts his last twenty years of far-flung exploits in search of spectacular prehistoric ruins and rock art panels known to very few modern travelers. His adventures range across Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado, and illuminate the mysteries of the Ancestral Puebloans and their contemporary neighbors the Mogollon and Fremont, as well as of the more recent Navajo and Comanche.

Desolation Canyon is one of the West's wild treasures. Visitors come to study, explore, run the river, and hike a canyon that is deeper at its deepest than the Grand Canyon, better preserved than most of the Colorado River system, and full of eye-catching geology-castellated ridges, dramatic walls, slickrock formations, and lovely beaches. Rafting the river, one may see wild horses, blue herons, bighorn sheep, and possibly a black bear. Signs of previous people include the newsworthy, well-preserved Fremont Indian ruins along Range Creek and rock art panels of Nine Mile Canyon, both Desolation Canyon tributaries. Historic Utes also pecked rock art, including images of graceful horses and lively locomotives, in the upper canyon. Remote and difficult to access, Desolation has a surprisingly lively history. Cattle and sheep herding, moonshine, prospecting, and hideaways brought a surprising number of settlers--ranchers, outlaws, and recluses--to the canyon.

Rock art is one of the most visible and geographically widespread of cultural expressions, and it spans much of the period of our species' existence. Rock art also provides rare and often unique insights into the minds and visually creative capacities of our ancestors and how selected rock outcrops with distinctive images were used to construct symbolic landscapes and shape worldviews. Equally important, rock art is often central to the expression of and engagement with spiritual entities and forces, and in all these dimensions it signals the diversity of cultural practices, across place and through time. Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have studied ancient arts on rock surfaces, both out in the open and within caves and rock shelters, and social anthropologists have revealed how people today use art in their daily lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art showcases examples of such research from around the world and across a broad range of cultural contexts, giving a sense of the art's regional variability, its antiquity, and how it is meaningful to people in the recent past and today - including how we have ourselves tended to make sense of the art of others, replete with our own preconceptions. It reviews past, present, and emerging theoretical approaches to rock art investigation and presents new, cutting-edge methods of rock art analysis for the student and professional researcher alike.

Visit fifty amazing places highlighting indigenous peoples’ art, engineering, and more in “a thoroughly enjoyable guide to America’s prehistory.” ―American Archaeology Well-traveled anthropologist Kenneth Feder invites readers to explore the stunning technological, architectural, engineering, and artistic achievements of America’s first peoples. Part travel guide, part friendly reference, Ancient America showcases fifty iconic and publicly accessible sites located across the contiguous United States, most in state and national parks—including monumental pyramids of earth, “castles” ensconced in cliff niches, and vast rock art galleries. Among the places profiled are: Four World Heritage Sites (Chaco Canyon, NM; Mesa Verde, CO; Cahokia, IL; Poverty Point, LA) Numerous Historic Landmarks and National Monuments (including Crystal River, FL; Town Creek Mound, NC; Casa Grande, AZ; and Hovenweep, UT) Stunningly diverse sites ranging from Serpent Mound (OH) and Horsethief Lake (WA) to Canyon de Chelly (AZ) and Nine Mile Canyon (UT) In addition to practical visitor information, Feder tells the fascinating stories of each site as revealed by archaeological research. Introductory chapters delve into the deep past of Native America; historical and cultural details as well as original photography round out the site entries. “Sites are . . . ranked on a number of factors useful for visitors, including ‘Ease of Road Access,’ ‘Natural Beauty,’ ‘Kid Friendliness,’ and the overall ‘Wow Factor.’ . . . will inspire readers to visit places that will connect them to the early peoples of North America.” ―Booklist

This fourth edition of David Grant Noble's indispensable guide to archaeological ruins of the American Southwest includes updated text and many newly opened archaeological sites. From Alibates Flint Quarries in Texas to the Zuni-Acoma Trail in New Mexico, readers are provided with such favorites as Chaco Canyon and new treasures such as Sears Kay Ruin. In addition to descriptions of each site, Noble provides time-saving tips for the traveler, citing major highways, nearby towns and the facilities they offer, campgrounds, and other helpful information. Filled with photos of ruins, petroglyphs, and artifacts, as well as maps, this is a guide every traveler needs when exploring the Southwest.

A look into the life and passion of David D. Rust (1874-1963), a pioneer in adventurous backcountry guided tours of the Colorado Plateau province of Utah and Arizona, who led month-long pack trips through a mind-boggling variety of cliffs, mesas, mountaintop overlooks, and hidden desert canyons.