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Engaging and humorous academic archaeological rant, nominally about whether Chaco Canyon is the center of a long and large class society in the southwest and connected to Mesoamerican culture as much as an odd Pueblo precursor, but fundamentally about widening archaeological discussion from local site parochial scientism to engage narrative prehistory, persuasive argument, and speculation.

An American mom who comes to realize our approach to parenting - from industrialized roots and consumerist separation of kid/parent worlds and work/play activities, to its narrow forms of control and praise and anger, to nuclear family isolation and overwhelming expectations - is just weird and counterproductive. She frames this in time spent with her toddler while reporting on contemporary indigenous families approaches, and in seeing practices embodied in community her answers in translation are applicable to adult relationships as well as the task of raising future adults with well-developed senses of belonging and capacity and confidence. Pay attention to the behaviors you model and encourage, and create autonomy not independence nor control.

A fragmented linear history, simultaneously text-heavy and disjointedly repetitive in its story, and then meandering to fit in a frame or poster making a tangential global connection; the art is consistent but mostly reduced to portraiture and caricature.

Thoughts on young children, on theatre, often the prompt is enough to fill in the thought, or provides the structure she proceeds to erase, in probing our expectations.

Referenced as source inspiration for Roanhorse's Black Sun, so as the sequel to that is coming up on my list I'll read a different kind of "speculative" pre-history...

Reflecting on a Robin Wall Kimmerer quote on gift economies and the author's time with Hadzabe families, this also sums up the book's philosophical realization.

Varied essays on anarchism in the 70s vs the Left, mostly aimed at redirecting consciousness raising, environmentalist, and marxist strains to fully abandon their industrial, capitalist, technologist, and fundamentally domineering underpinnings for a utopian but not universalist project of liberatory self-development self-organization and ecological coexistence.