Chaco Canyon in brief
Chaco Canyon is a dry, high-desert canyon in northwestern New Mexico. Between about 850 and 1150 AD it was the centre of a culture of the Ancestral Pueblo people. They built a dozen large buildings, known as great houses, of fitted stone, some four or five storeys high, and with hundreds of rooms. It is now Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and a World Heritage Site since 1987.
Pueblo Bonito
The largest great house, Pueblo Bonito, was built in stages from the 800s to about 1130 AD. It has a D-shaped plan, with about 650 or more rooms, around a plaza with several great kivas. It rises to four or five storeys and covers about 1.2 hectares. Only a small part of the rooms were lived in. Many seem to have been used for storage and ceremonies.
An organised society
- Roads. Wide straight roads, up to about 9 metres across, run from Chaco across the landscape, some for tens of kilometres, to outlying communities. Their purpose is debated, and may have been ceremonial.
- Timber. More than 200,000 large trees, spruce, fir and pine, were carried on foot from mountain forests tens of kilometres away (some sources say up to 110 km) for the roofs.
- Trade. The people of Chaco obtained turquoise, shells from the Pacific coast, and scarlet macaws from Mexico, about 2,000 kilometres away. Analyses of pottery found in Pueblo Bonito showed traces of cacao, the source of chocolate, which was also imported from Mexico.
- Astronomy. On Fajada Butte, spirals carved in the rock were found to be marked by shafts of sunlight at the solstices and equinoxes, called the Sun Dagger, though shifting slabs have since disturbed the effect. Some buildings are aligned with the sun and moon.
Who ruled?
Burials in Pueblo Bonito in one room, Room 33, held 14 people with a great deal of turquoise, shell and other offerings. A 2017 DNA study showed that they were from one maternal family line that lasted for about 300 years, which suggests that the elite may have been a hereditary group. Some researchers argue that Chaco was a ceremonial centre, visited by pilgrims at certain times, and others that it was a political centre with a powerful elite. The debate continues.
Decline
Around 1130 to 1150, building stopped. A long drought, and perhaps social tension, led people to move away, and the population shifted to other places such as Aztec Ruins and Mesa Verde. The descendants, the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande, Acoma, Zuni and Hopi, regard Chaco as an ancestral place and maintain strong ties to it.
Why it matters
Chaco shows a degree of planning, trade and ceremony in the American Southwest earlier than the arrival of Europeans, and its architecture is among the most impressive in North America.
Visiting
The park is remote, reached by unpaved roads, and has a visitor centre, a campground and loop road to the major sites. It is also a dark sky park, good for viewing stars. See also Mesa Verde.
Sources
- Lekson, S. H. (ed.) (2006). The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-Century Pueblo Regional Center. School of American Research Press.
- Kennett, D. J. and others (2017). Archaeogenomic evidence reveals prehistoric matrilineal dynasty. Nature Communications 8: 14115.
- Crown, P. L. and Hurst, W. J. (2009). Evidence of cacao use in the Prehispanic American Southwest. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106: 2110 to 2113.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Chaco Culture.