Welcome to our Field Notes section, where we document our explorations and findings related to the ancient traditions and practices of the Southwest. These logs serve as a comprehensive record of our expeditions, capturing the essence of our research and the stories we uncover.
Our Field Notes include:
- Expedition Logs: Detailed accounts of our journeys, including observations, experiences, and insights gained from the field.
- Site Documentation: In-depth descriptions and analyses of significant locations, artifacts, and cultural practices that reflect the heritage of the region.
- Ritual Studies: Explorations of ancient rituals and their relevance in contemporary contexts, highlighting the continuity of cultural practices.
We invite you to join us in this journey of discovery, as we reveal the ancient ways that continue to shape our understanding of the Southwest. Through our Field Notes, we aim to foster a deeper appreciation for the rich tapestry of history and culture that defines this remarkable region.
How We Keep Field Notes, and Why It Matters
A field note is only as useful as the habits behind it. Before anything is written up for this section, we follow a few simple practices borrowed from archaeology, ethnography and old-fashioned local history. Each entry records where and when an observation was made, what the weather and light were like, and who, if anyone, shared knowledge with us. Those details can seem fussy, but they are what let a reader judge an account years later, when memories have faded and landscapes have changed.
Respect comes before documentation
Much of the Southwest's living heritage belongs to Pueblo, Navajo, Apache and Hispano communities who have their own rules about what may be seen, photographed or written down. Many pueblos restrict photography, sketching or recording during ceremonies, and some dances are closed to visitors entirely. We treat those boundaries as part of the record, not obstacles to it. When a practice is not ours to describe, our notes say so plainly and stop there. Where people do share stories, we try to credit communities rather than reduce them to anonymous informants.
Leaving sites as we found them
Rock art panels, ruined field houses and potsherd scatters across New Mexico are protected by federal and state law, and they are fragile in ways that are easy to forget. Our notes describe locations in general terms to avoid drawing traffic to vulnerable places. We never collect artifacts, touch petroglyphs or stack stones, and we encourage readers who explore on their own to do the same: stay on established trails, look rather than handle, and report damage to the land manager.
From notebook to longer work
Field notes are raw material. Some observations stay short; others grow into the extended essays in our Chapters, where we set them alongside historical sources and earlier scholarship. Documents, maps and older accounts that help us check what we saw are gathered in the Archives, and recommended reading on Southwest history and ritual lives in the Library. Read together, they show how a single afternoon's observation can connect to centuries of continuity and change.
Also on this site: ancientwaysrevealed.com