Crow Canyon Archaeological Center: Where Students Dig Alongside Scientists
Near Cortez, Colorado
Just outside Cortez sits the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, a nonprofit institution that changed how archaeological research in the American Southwest is practiced. It grew out of a program that Edward Berger, a high school history teacher who believed that students of all ages could contribute meaningfully to serious archaeological work rather than just observing it, began in nineteen sixty eight, and it was formally established as the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in nineteen eighty three. Crow Canyon became the first organization to systematically bring working archaeologists together with students, teachers, and community members on actual excavations rather than educational simulations.
Its primary research site was Sand Canyon Pueblo, the large Ancestral Puebloan village west of Cortez, which Crow Canyon archaeologists excavated and documented over many seasons. The center also conducted major work at Yellow Jacket Pueblo, believed to be one of the largest Ancestral Puebloan villages ever constructed, with upward of a thousand surface rooms and more than a hundred and ninety kivas spread across its site. Crow Canyon operates through formal collaboration with Pueblo, Ute, Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, and Paiute peoples, recognizing that the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans hold legitimate authority over how their ancestors' sites are interpreted and studied.
The center received the National Trust for Historic Preservation's National Preservation Honor Award in two thousand eight and the Society for American Archaeology's Award for Excellence in Public Education in nineteen ninety nine. It continues to operate on its one hundred seventy acre campus, welcoming researchers, students, and visitors to one of the most serious public archaeology programs anywhere in the country.
