The Galisteo Basin and the Cerrillos Hills, an ancient seabed ringed by ancient volcanic upheavals, are located in Central New Mexico. The region has been occupied for thousands of years. The oldest known turquoise mines in North America, as well as the earliest significant gold strike in North America, can be found in this region. The town of Galisteo was founded in 1617, while Los Cerrillos got its start as a railroad stop and regional center in 1880. Archaeological work on eight major Pueblo ruins was initiated in 1912 by Nels Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History. Many photographs from his expedition are found in this book, with several of them never having been published before. Also included are images of Cerrillos Hills mining in 1880; again, some of these photographs have never been previously published.

The Galisteo Basin of northern New Mexico has been a staple of archaeological research since it was first studied almost a century ago. This first book on the area since 1914 lays out an overview of the area, with research provided by the Tano Origins Project and funded by the National Science Foundation. This volume covers the region’s history (including the Burnt Corn Pueblo, Petroglyph Hill, and Lodestar sites) during the Coalition Period (AD 1200–1300). Including chapters on architecture, ceramics, tree-ring samples, groundstone, and rock art, the book also addresses the stress that development has placed on the future of research in the area.

In her second book on Galisteo, New Mexico, cultural historian Lucy R. Lippard writes about the place she has lived for a quarter century. The history of a place she refers to as Pueblo Chico (little town) is based largely on other people's memories--those of the descendants of the original settlers in the early 1800s, heirs of the Spanish colonizers and the indigenous colonized who courageously settled this isolated valley despite official neglect and threats of Indian raids. The memories of those who came later--Hispano and Anglo--also echo through this book. But too many lives have already receded into the land, and few remain to tell the stories. The land itself has the longest memory, harboring traces of towns, trails, agriculture, and other land use that goes back thousands of years. The Galisteo Basin is a cultural landscape that has become familiar to Lippard, simultaneously enriched with the stories she has been told by longtime residents and veiled by those she has not been told. From its inception, Galisteo has been about the vortex of land and lives, about the way the land reveals its coexistence with humans, the ways people have changed it, and the ways the land has in turn changed the people who lived here long enough to become part of it. Complementing the history are two hundred historical and contemporary images, many provided by Galisteo's citizens and heirs.