In the opening paragraphs of Wisdom Sits in Places, Basso presents us with the central question of the book: How do people form a sense of place? Basso explains that sense of place often goes unexamined until someone finds that sense challenged by moving to unfamiliar surroundings: “It is then that we come to see that attachments to places may be nothing less than profound, and that when these attachments are threatened we may feel threatened as well” (xiii-xiv).

Basso goes on to explain that places are also formed by the knowledge held by cultures; Nonetheless, he says, place as a concept has been little explored by cultural anthropologists. Basso himself didn’t begin examining place until he had spent two decades doing fieldwork with the Western Apache in the village of Cibecue, where he’d examined subjects ranging from Apache ceremonial symbolism and witchcraft beliefs to patterns of silence in social interactions. When Basso was searching for a new project, the chairman of the White Mountain Apache tribe, Ronnie Lupe, suggested he “find out something about how we know our country” by making Apache maps containing Apache place names (xv).

A year later, Basso began the five-year project, which consisted of traveling to named locations in the region of Cibecue, speaking with Apache consultants about those names, and listening to how those names were used by members of the community.