Annual Letter from Solstice Project 2022
Archaeologists Rich Friedman and Rob Weiner with Anna Sofaer at a Written on the Landscape filming event.
Photo by cinematographer Dyanna Taylor.
My Chaco Canyon Journey
Many of you have experienced my Chaco Canyon journey through my two previous films, The Sun Dagger and The Mystery of Chaco Canyon, both narrated by Robert Redford and together viewed by more than half a million people. Audiences continue to access the films on Amazon Prime and as presented every year on PBS in New Mexico.
I’m writing you on the winter solstice, December 21, the shortest day of the year, and a day marked by the people of Chaco Canyon in works of architecture that spanned some 75,000 square miles of the American Southwest.
With a team of superb, experienced filmmakers, and extensive interviews with researchers and indigenous experts over the past decade, we are close to realizing the completion of my third film, Written on the Landscape. I am pleased to announce that with our existing funding we have completed a first assembly of a rough cut. The film reveals our latest findings about the Chaco culture and the vast expanse of its influence and interchange with peoples of Mesoamerica.
Another $50,000 is needed to add new state of the art animation and complete the editing necessary for a polished rough cut. With the formal rough cut in hand, we can approach additional sources for completion funding, distribution and marketing.
Our film will document Chaco’s fast vanishing cultural landscape and awaken the public to its significance in our world today. The Chaco civilization came to fruition between 800 and 1250 AD with an incredible cultural richness and astronomical knowledge that carries moral lessons for our own era. The story of Chaco suggests that perhaps a civilization can become too powerful and contain within its achievements, the seeds not of destruction but rather a remarkable moral reawakening toward a more sustainable and egalitarian society.
You may have seen Chaco in the news lately, as Secretary Deb Haaland has called for Congressional approval of a 10-mile radius around Chaco Canyon for protection from oil and gas drilling and development. We have uncovered a wealth of new knowledge about the Chacoan people who have been greatly undervalued, in part, because they left us no written record. The record, as we show, is literally “written on the landscape.”
Our film documents archaeological evidence that reveals a far larger Chacoan region that has gone largely unrecognized and requires greater protection than the initial Congressional allocation. We seek to promote protection and acknowledgment of this world treasure in our own “backyard.”
See below our cast and crew in the production of Written on the Landscape.
Please join me by contributing however generously you can in our effort to complete Written on the Landscape and share the wonders and lessons of the ancient Chaco people with a national and international audience.
Thank you,
Anna Sofaer
President
Solstice Project
222 East Marcy Street #19
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
If you prefer, please mail your donation to the Solstice Project address above. Please note that the Solstice Project is a 501c3 non-profit organization and your contributions are tax deductible to the extent that the law allows.
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Written on the Landscape
Cast & Crew
With these remarkable participants, Written on the Landscape will transform understanding of the Chaco people; showing that their interests and achievements reached to the stars with a brilliant conceptual map of the cosmos on the vast arid landscape of the Chaco region. In reflections of descendant people, the film also highlights the wisdom of their choice to close Chaco and to no longer live in a hierarchy of powerful people seeking control of nature. A profoundly important message has been shared for us today as we face challenging choices with our human created climate crises.
Petuuche Gilbert, of Acoma Pueblo, educator and activist, describes the moral lessons of Chaco and how people left Chaco to form new, more egalitarian and sustainable societies that exist to this day.
Taft Blackhorse, a member of the Diné, is an archaeologist with extensive knowledge of Chaco. He shares his people’s understanding of Chaco sites, and the power of The Gambler who enslaved people, manipulating them with gambling and Datura, to build the Great Houses of Chaco.
Phillip Tuwaletstiwa, of the Hopi Tribe, former deputy director of the National Geodetic Survey, combines his scientific research into the astronomical alignments of Chaco buildings with insights into the symbolic significance of the sun and moon as instruments for Chaco elites to gain power with their special knowledge.
Paul Pino, of the Laguna Pueblo, educator, and former chairman of the Laguna Tribal Historic Preservation Board explores the spiritual dimensions of the Chaco world that continue in traditions of his people today.
Elena Ortiz, of the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, an educator and daughter of anthropologist Alfonso Ortiz, speaks from personal experiences beginning in childhood, to convey cautionary lessons learned from the Chaco dominance over nature, and a move by her people to an ethos of equality.
Alonso Mendez, an archaeoastronomer and artist of Maya heritage, who has done extensive work in Palenque, Mexico, shares his deep insights into Mesoamerican cosmology, drawing parallels between these traditions and Chacoan and Puebloan traditions.
Rich Friedman, archaeologist with four decades of Chaco field research, applies new technologies, such as LiDAR, to broaden our understanding of the immense scope of the Chacoans’ architecture and the significance of their system of “roads.”
Rob Weiner, archaeologist and doctoral candidate, explores the significance of Chacoan roads and their relationships with distinct topographic features and astronomical events. He shares his findings of Mesoamerican exotic goods and gaming pieces as powerful ritual objects in Chacoan society.
Anna Sofaer, our guide on the Chaco journey, rediscovered long-lost knowledge of the Sun Dagger in 1977. Her writings and two previous films have broadened our knowledge and understanding of this remarkable ancient civilization that left no written record, but “writing on the landscape,” to be uncovered by the Solstice Project team.
Pat Sandoval, member of Laguna Pueblo, retired Superintendent of Laguna Middle School, former Director of Planning and Evaluation at the SFIS, and a long-time supporter of the Solstice Project’s educational outreach. She underscores the importance of Indian youth learning the scientific achievements of their ancestors.
Adriel Heisey, pilot and aerial cinematographer, is contributing to our film striking images of Chaco Great Houses and “roads” throughout the vast expanse of the Four Corners. He says in the film that he continues to “discover new sites every day,” in some of the most surprisingly remote desert landscapes.
With his expertise in archaeoastronomy and refined skills in night sky cinematography, David Valentine has captured magnificent imagery for Written on the Landscape. In exploring Chaco ruins in the canyon and the far reaches of the Four Corners he has also created beautiful footage of ancient architecture set in rugged desert terrains.
Christopher Beaver has produced, directed, and edited numerous films including Dark Circle that was awarded Grand Prize in Documentary at the US (now Sundance) Film Festival, and a National Emmy in News and Broadcasting, and was short-listed for Academy Award Feature Documentary. Recently, his film, Groundwater, received Special Recognition, Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism. Chris has contributed film and edited extensively our rough cut of Written on the Landscape.
If you prefer, please mail your donation to the Solstice Project address above. Please note that the Solstice Project is a 501c3 non-profit organization and your contributions are tax deductible to the extent that the law allows.
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Recent research and progress
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The Solstice Project will present its recent research and progress on its film production — Written on the Landscape — conveying the remarkable expanse of the Chaco Culture throughout the Four Corners on Sept. 14 at 7 p.m. in the Student Union Ballroom at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. The presentation will also be available to watch live via Zoom.
The presentation, “Update on Chaco Solstice Project,” will be given by Anna Sofaer, President of the Solstice Project, Chaco researcher, archaeoastronomer and film producer, and Richard Friedman, archaeologist, geologist, geospatial sciences specialist, and Research Associate with the Solstice Project.
The Solstice Project’s new imagery from LiDAR and photogrammetry reveals — in more detail than ever before — multiple replications of Chacoan Great House/Great Kiva complexes and ‘road’ relationships in this vast and rugged terrain. They will show how the pattern in Chaco Canyon of alignments of monumental buildings and roads to solar and lunar events is repeated at sites up to 140 miles from the canyon. Prevalent throughout the Chaco World are striking relationships created between the built environment and distinctive land forms, as well as an integration of the cosmos. This ancient cosmography resonates deeply with Puebloan and Diné traditions of holding maps of their spiritual concepts on the landscape.
This research suggests great power at the hub of the culture: at Pueblo Bonito in particular. Puebloan and Dine traditions convey that the Gambler dominated Chaco, forcing people to construct the roads and buildings. There was a presence of dark forces — and “conflicts between good and evil.” At the conclusion of the talk, a member of Acoma Pueblo will convey in a filmed interview the choice of his people to stop the ancestors’ control of the natural forces and return to a more reciprocal relationship with nature: a poignant message for us today.
Click here for the Zoom link to watch the presentation.
https://www.sjbas.org/
Solstice Project on PBS KNME Colores , 1/15 – New Insights on Chaco
Dear Friends,
When asked why I and my colleagues stay so deeply engaged with Chaco, over decades, I talk about new compelling evidence that this ancient culture brilliantly mapped a vast region of the American Southwest with their cosmology — holding in their mind’s eye writing on the landscape. These new insights resonate deeply with the Puebloan people today who have shared that “roads” are spirit ways and perceive land as sacred.
Visit our beautiful new web site: www.solsticeproject.org
518 Old Santa Fe Trail
STE 1 #511
Santa Fe, NM 87505
©Adriel Heisey Chimney Rock Great House, 92 miles north of Chaco Canyon, perched on a precipice in the southern Rockies; at lower left of photo
Written on the Landscape
Click here to watch the Trailer!
Our biggest news is the progress on our film, Written on the Landscape. Our latest research shows that the patterns of astronomical alignments in the central canyon and their relationships to sacred landscape are repeated throughout the Chaco world, much amplified since The Mystery of Chaco Canyon. The new film expands our field of vision to the culture’s reach across the Four Corners, and it also looks south, finding interchanges and correspondences with Mesoamerica.
One of our most important recent discoveries is how remarkably vast the Chaco region is – reaching into four states, an area the size of Ohio. We query the Chacoans’ inspiration to amass immense resources and manpower to build massive structures in desolate swaths of a remote desert, including hundreds of great kivas and ritual roads. The mystery unfolds as we discover many sites and roads align to dramatic formations in the landscape, and often to solar or lunar events. And we return to Chaco Canyon, to Pueblo Bonito as a great ritual center and power hub radiating out.
Rather than telling you, we’re including a special bonus, to show you – a link to the trailer that suggests its promise as a final hour-long film. We are very pleased that Robert Redford has lent his endorsement to the film.
We need to raise $180,000 now to reach our goals of completing this phase of production in early 2022, and ultimately to raise an additional $700,000 further to complete our full-length version of the film. Interviews are in the wings to be shot on location in Aztec Ruin at winter solstice, at Mt. Taylor, and two outlying Great House/Road complexes. Updating scenic, time lapse and aerial footage is essential in evoking the magnetic beauty of the Chaco world. Further development of the script is required, involving consultations with writer/advisors, as well as review and sequencing of extensive footage. Please join us by contributing to this exciting venture to enhance our understanding and appreciation of the great legacy of the Chaco culture – not only for Puebloan descendants, but for all of us! Know that contributions will be noted in thoughtful credits in the final production.