Item Detail
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27823
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0
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0
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English
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The Temple and the Rock : James W. Lesueur and the Synchronization of Sacred Space in the American Southwest
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Journal of Mormon History
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April 2017
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43
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2
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Champaign, IL
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University of Illinois Press; Mormon History Association
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131-148
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[James W. Lesueur's] parents were one of the original Mormon pioneering families to settle in the greater Phoenix area in the 1870s. A devoted student of Southwest archaeology, Lesueur published an array of articles, tracts, and books about the pre-Columbian Southwest. His impact on the region, moreover, extended well beyond his printed works. He was devoted to the synchronization of archaeology, anthropology, native beliefs, and Mormon sacred texts. He sought to demarcate a sacred geography of place, located on the site of the Mormon Temple in Mesa, Arizona. My article will discuss how he accomplished this by symbolically and literally anchoring both Mormon and Indian cosmologies upon the sacred soil of the Temple grounds. [From the text]