This book invites us to step into a Hohokam village with its sounds of barking dogs, children's laughter, and the ever-present grinding of mano on metate to produce the daily bread. Here, too, readers will marvel at the skills of Clovis elephant hunters and touch the lives of other ancestral people known as Mogollon, Anasazi, Sinagua, and Salado. Descriptions of long-ago people are balanced with tales about the archaeologists who have devoted their lives to learning more about "those who came before." Trekking through the desert with the famed Emil Haury, readers will stumble upon Ventana Cave, his "answer to a prayer." With amateur archaeologist Richard Wetherill, they will sense the peril of crossing the flooded San Juan River on the way to Chaco Canyon. Others profiled in the book are A. V. Kidder, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, Julian Hayden, Harold S. Gladwin, and many more names synonymous with the continuing saga of southwestern archaeology.