The Forgotten Side of Bandelier: Archeology of the Tsankawi Ruins at Bandelier National Monument

Seated between the modern Rio Grande Pueblos and ancient Chaco Canyon, both physically and temporally, the Tsankawi ruins of Bandelier National Monument on the Pajarito Plateau in Northern New Mexico are an often overlooked piece on the giant puzzle of Southwest Archeology. Once featuring a stone masonry pueblo with hundreds of rooms that stood up to 3 stories high and over 350 cliff-side talus pueblos, Tsankawi Mesa was home to a thriving community of Ancestral Puebloan people for hundreds of years. In the shadow of both the larger main section of Bandelier and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Tsankawi has historically been overlooked, relegated to footnotes, or mentioned only in passing. The Forgotten Side of Bandelier consolidates the archeology and anthropology of Tsankawi that was once scattered through many disparate sources and puts it in a larger context from the Ice Age though the modern day. An inheritor of the Chaco culture and a progenitor of Pueblo people still living near Santa Fe, Tsankawi is a fascinating piece of the prehistoric Southwest. Includes over 40 images.