My bookshelf·Index No. 0051

The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest

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The sequel to In Search of the Old Ones, twenty years on. He revisits sites and finds some wrecked by visitation and others still untouched, and pushes into new country — Range Creek in Utah, kept private by one family for fifty years and effectively a time capsule; the Sinagua and Hohokam south of the Colorado Plateau; the Fremont; a Comb Ridge panel nobody can explain. Also, there’s a chapter on the Everett Ruess bones episode Roberts was central to. It’s the same mix as before: Hard hiking, arguments with archaeologists, and real curiosity about people who left no writing. Not as powerful as In Search, but a worthy companion nonetheless.

The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest
By David Roberts. W.W. Norton & Company, 2015. 352 pages.