To visiting geologists Black Rock, New Mexico, is a basaltic escarpment and an ideal natural laboratory. To hospital workers, Black Rock is a picturesque place to earn a living. To the Zuni, the mesas, arroyos, and the rock itself are a stage on which the passion of their elders is relived. William A. Dodge explores how a shared sense of place evolves over time and through multiple cultures that claim the landscape.

Through stories told over many generations, this landscape has given the Zuni an understanding of how they came to be in this world. More recently, paleogeographers have...