Paul Reed, Preservation Archaeologist

Guest speaker Paul F. Reed continues work begun as a Preservation Archaeologist with Archaeology Southwest in 2001. He is based in Taos, New Mexico, and works as Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins, New Mexico. Reed’s most recent writing is a book (Gary M. Brown as coeditor) entitled Aztec, Salmon, and the Pueblo Heartland of the Middle San Juan, published in SAR Press’ Popular Series in 2018.

He also served as editor (and author of several chapters) on Chaco’s Northern Prodigies: Salmon, Aztec, and the Ascendancy of the Middle San Juan Region After AD 1100, published by the University of Utah Press (2008). Reed was the editor and author of several chapters of the three-volume, comprehensive report entitled Thirty-Five Years of Archaeological Research at Salmon Ruins, New Mexico (2006). His other books – The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon (2004) and Foundations of Anasazi Culture (published in 2000; as editor and author) have explored the origins of Puebloan culture and Chaco Canyon.

During the last six years, Reed has been working to protect the Greater Chaco Landscape from the effects of expanded oil-gas development associated with fracking in the Mancos Shale formation. Through a series of meetings and forums with public officials, Tribal leaders, various US Government agencies, and New Mexico’s Congressional delegation, Archaeology Southwest and its partners have focused on expanding protections to sites, traditional cultural places, and fragile landscapes in the greater San Juan Basin.

The most recent effort on this front is to partner with the Pueblo of Acoma to complete a focused ethnographic study of Acoma’s connections to the Greater Chaco Landscape. Among his other interests, Reed leads tours to Salmon and Aztec Ruins, Chaco Canyon, the Chuska Valley, and other locales across the Four Corners, and gives public presentations on different topics in southwestern archaeology and history. Reed has conducted fieldwork and research in the Southwest for more than 30 years. From 1993 to 2001, Reed directed a roads archaeology research program for the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department, Farmington, New Mexico. Reed completed his Bachelor of Arts (1986) and Master of Arts (1989 in anthropology and archaeology) degree at New Mexico State University.