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Paper: Pueblo Folklore, Landscape Phenomenology and the Visual Poetics of Fajada Butte
Volume: 409, Cosmology Across Cultures
Page: 289
Authors: Carey, C.
Abstract: In the interest of reexamining the site of Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, this paper seeks to recontextualize discussions of its controversial spiral petroglyphs and astronomical phenomena (Sun Daggers) with reference to landscape phenomenology, visual and literary poetics, and the astronomical orientation of contemporary Pueblo ceremonial practices. The dearth of recent scholarship on Fajada Butte may have arisen from the many controversial arguments about its function from a variety of disciplinary locations including archaeology, anthropology, geology, and archeoastronomy. Via an emphasis on the physical landscape, storytelling, contemporary ceremonial practices and ancestral ties to Chaco Canyon, the Zuni and Hopi pueblos provide a context for re-examining the astronomical phenomena of Fajada Butte as a natural shrine of the of Chacoan culture and repository of an array of symbolic content.
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