In this talk Katelyn J. Bishop explores the use and significance of birds in the North American Southwest in order to reconstruct details of ceremonial life during Chaco Canyon’s major occupation (AD 800-1150). Six museum collections were examined to produce a dataset that presents all avifaunal remains excavated over the last 130 years. Results not only shed light on the value of birds to the prehispanic occupants of Chaco Canyon and on the nature of Chacoan ritual, but also demonstrate the importance of (re)examining collections from historic excavations, and the value of using legacy and archival data to enhance provenience and contextual information.
