Chaco Canyon - Late Bonito phase

  General Description  
“Chaco Canyon is a remote and lonely place in northwest New Mexico that stretches for about 20 miles between high sandstone cliffs. The wind whips clouds of dry, sandy soil through the olive green greasewood bushes scattered across the canyon floor and swirls around the ragged walls of the silent ruins of ancient buildings that once rang with shouting and laughter. A thousand years ago, people lived in the canyon in 11 ‘great houses’, each one of them big enough to provide homes for an entire village. These long-ago people dug ditches to carry water to their fields of corn, beans, and squash. They constructed wide, straight roads to connect with the world outside the canyon. They built circular underground rooms called kivas, where they gathered to perform special rituals and ceremonies.” ^[1]
“By 1050, Chaco had become the ceremonial, administrative, and economic center of the San Juan Basin. Its sphere of influence was extensive. Dozens of great houses in Chaco Canyon were connected by roads to more than 150 great houses throughout the region. It is thought that the great houses were not traditional farming villages occupied by large populations. They may instead have been impressive examples of "public architecture" that were used periodically during times of ceremony, commerce, and trading when temporary populations came to the canyon for these events.
What was at the heart of this great social experiment? Pueblo descendants say that Chaco was a special gathering place where many peoples and clans converged to share their ceremonies, traditions, and knowledge. Chaco is central to the origins of several Navajo clans and ceremonies. Chaco is also an enduring enigma for researchers. Was Chaco the hub of a turquoise-trading network established to acquire macaws, copper bells, shells, and other commodities from distant lands? Did Chaco distribute food and resources to growing populations when the climate failed them? Was Chaco "the center place," binding a region together by a shared vision? We may never fully understand Chaco.” ^[2]
“From about AD 1000 - 1150, Chacoan culture presided over much of the Four Corners region. The Chacoan people created an urban center of spectacular public architecture by employing formal design, astronomical alignments, geometry, unique masonry, landscaping, and engineering techniques that allowed multi-storied construction for the first time in the American Southwest. The people built monumental public and ceremonial buildings in the canyon. The buildings were massive, multi-storied masonry structures of rooms, kivas, terraces, and plazas. The largest building-Pueblo Bonito-is estimated to have contained over 600 rooms and rose four, possibly five, stories high. Hundreds of miles of formal roads radiated out from the canyon and linked Chaco to distant communities.” ^[3]
“In the 1100s and 1200s, change came to Chaco as new construction slowed and Chaco’s role as a regional center shifted. Chaco’s influence continued at Aztec, Mesa Verde, the Chuska Mountains, and other centers to the north, south, and west. In time, the people shifted away from Chacoan ways, migrated to new areas, reorganized their world, and eventually interacted with foreign cultures. Their descendants are the modern Southwest Indians. Many Southwest Indian people look upon Chaco as an important stop along their clans’ sacred migration paths-a spiritual place to be honored and respected.” ^[2]
“Classic Chacoan and Mimbres society was brilliant, vibrant, and brief. Beginning around A.D. 1100, after only 150 to 200 years of good times, decline set in. People moved out of the warm, scrubby basins to upland areas of mixed piñon/ponderosa forest where new farmsteads were built. Some groups resettled near long-abandoned villages in surrounding highlands, while others pioneered in remote, forested districts like the Upper Gila drainage or the area around Bandelier National Monument north of Santa Fe.” ^[4]

[1]: (Vivian and Anderson 2002: 8-9) Vivian, R. Gwinn and Anderson, Margaret. 2002. Chaco Canyon, Digging for the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/996XW2NW

[2]: (“History & Culture - Chaco Culture”) “History & Culture - Chaco Culture” U.S. National Park Service, accessed May 08, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/chcu/learn/historyculture/index.htm. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/GB3X6QCR

[3]: (“Chaco Culture”) “Chaco Culture” NPS Museum Collections, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/chcu/index1.html. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/NMRVDA5I

[4]: (Stuart 2009: 106) Stuart, David E. 2009. The Ancient Southwest: Chaco Canyon, Bandelier, and Mesa Verde. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/X4CQDXF9