ASB 222 - Buried Civilizations of the Americas - Keith Kintigh

Lectures 24-25. The Chaco Phenomenon: Evaluating Alterative Interpretations

• What are cultures or cultural identities - today these would include national and ethnic identities?
• Do these have material indicators?
• Gets us back to style; What kinds of things mark cultural identity in the modern world?
• However, cultural identities are not fixed. They legitimately vary, are subject to manipulation and may be suppressed.
• Southwest - 3 major "Culture Areas"
• Ancestral Pueblo=Anasazi - Northern SW
• Mogollon - Mogollon Rim Mountains + SW New Mexico (Mimbres)
• Hohokam - Central & Soutwhern Arizona
• Are these "cultures" in a standard anthropological sense? NO. Diverse languages within. Instead, they are grouping of sites based on some general similaries in material culture
• Ancestral pueblo: pithouse=>pueblo architecture generally, round kivas, grey paste, coil and scrape pottery
• Mogollon: pithouse=>pueblo architecture generally, square kivas; brown paste pottery
• Hohokam: dispersed pithouse=>compound architecture; buff paste, paddle & anvil pottery.
• Are there modern analogs?
• Ancestral Pueblo may be something like "western Europe" similar trajectories, different languages, much shared culture but much internal cultural difference and over time, shifting boundaries.
• Hohokam may be more like US. Regional differences, but more integrity.
• Mogollon, I'm not sure, maybe better part of ancestral pueblo.
• This is NOT to say there are prehistoric nation-states in Chaco Canyon.
• Nonetheless, this is our general framework, and you'll see it in every museum and National Park.
• We'll look at one ancestral Pueblo phenomenon - the Chaco Phenomenon
• At the Classic Hohokam of the Salt River Valley
• At Paquime or Casas Grandes in N. Chihuahua
• Questions underlying each of these is the degree to which each represents essentially a local phenomenon or whether it is essentially derivative of Mesoamerican civilizations
• While most of Southwestern archaeologists believe these phenomena are primarily local, there exist strongly held alternative views.
• Chaco Canyon
• 32 mi² arid canyon cut by minor wash in NW New Mexico, now Chaco Culture National Historic Park. Within the canyon are 2400 sites, primarily AD 800-1200. Chaco Phenomenon, AD 900-1110
• In SW prior to Chaco dispersed small villages and some large, very short-lived villages (ca. 25 years). Out of the blue we see unprecedented monumental architecture; 10 great pueblos with up to 5 story masonry and a few rich graves in Chaco Canyon. The best known is Pueblo Bonito.
• Chaco Canyon seems to be the center, from ca AD 900-1150 an ancestral pueblo "system" that covered at least 40,000mi² with > 100 outlying centers called "outliers."
• Remainder of Chaco Lectures
• What I will do is show some slides and discuss some of the enigmatic aspects of Chaco.
• We will then discuss some key assumptions about the archaeological record of Chaco Canyon. Some of these we have pretty well resolved with data, others are open.
• We will then discuss different interpretations of the data and their relative support
• Enigmas
• Architectural
• village/town; small house/great house difference
• S/N, runoff/irrigation agriculture
• ordinary Pueblo II period architecture vs. large, planned, labor intensive in downtown Chaco
• large: 3 of 4 w/i canyon 18,000 m² (4+ football fields);
• medium: 6 of 7 w/i canyon 8,000 m² (2 football fields)
• >100 small widely scattered, 1200m²
• Architectural scale
• 1,000,000 dressed stones 10,000,000 lbs veneer
• beams from 30 miles away
• NOT dragged
• Impressed archaeologists, but Steve Lekson argues it is not all that much labor
• Kivas
• Kivas, develop from earlier pithouses, and from analogy with historic pueblos are ceremonial structures (mainly for men). Characterize earlier ancestral pueblo sites. have formal features: benches, hearths, ventilators, deflectors
• Great Kivas, larger >10m (33 feet) in diameter even more formal during Chacoan period, have kiva features plus "foot drums" and other features. Exist prior to Chaco, but strongly associated with outliers
• Platform mound as trash mound at Pueblo Bonito
• Population
• By some estimates 4000-6000, but valley would support only 2000 with local agriculture.
• Outliers
• Smaller (with 2 exceptions) great houses w/ core and veneer architecture, often great kivas, large, tall interior rooms. Some are multiple story and have a nazha (berm).
• Some have associated communities of 5 to 25 pueblos, some do not.
• Chacoan Roads
• Estimated 1500mi of pedestrian roads go to outliers, quarries, water sources & ?. Six of the roads are 20 miles or more long (1 has 30 associated outliers)
• Roads are straight even when it is counter-economic for them to be straight. Some are cut into stone, stone-lined, have cut stone steps, and berms (mounds) on either side.
• Trade
• Ceramics and lithics mainly along roads, into Chaco, not out
• Long distance: macaws, copper bells
• Evidence of turquoise (from Cerillos) working
• Burials/Status
• very few burials all together, 650. At small houses, 46% in trash mounds; at great houses 96% w/i structures.
• 5 possible paramount chiefs (4 M, 1 F) & 1 possible high status child in towns
• At Pueblo Bonito: 2 tombs; sets of rooms shut of n=18, 21 individuals. A. 16 over boards, 2 underneath; B. 4 rooms shut off 21 bodies covered with dirt.
• Almost all turquoise with adults, most with males. High ranking individuals have same nutritional problems as low ranking, lots of pathologies.
• At the Pueblo Alto great house, site of recent National Park Service work, were found 125 broken vessels per year/family compared with 17/year at small house sites. What might this indicate.
• Alternative Assumptions
• small house/great house distinction as a chronological development or as 2 different contemporaneous groups, or as residential/ritual
• Chaco Canyon as a collection of sites or Chaco Canyon as a single social entity (or something in between). Early explanations accepted the former, unquestioningly. More recently, see Chaco, or at least the great houses as an integrated but dynamic whole.
• Great houses as large scale residences or great houses as storage facilities with little year-round occupation.
• Traditionally, assume 1-2 people per room
• Alternatively, not a large resident population. Pueblo Bonito has 695 rooms 5 stories; but if 1 fire pit per household, 45 fire pits, 45 households; ~100 population. Alterative room connectivity argument yields similar conclusion. At Pueblo del Arroyo Arroyo 40-60 population and Pueblo Alto Alto 50-100. This suggests many fewer people than had been imagined.
• Outliers as political outposts vs outliers as local developments. Jury is out. Likely not simple impositions by Chaco
• Macaws/copper bells as indicators of Mesoamerican dominance vs indicators of low level trade
• Interpretations: Implications vs. data
• Trade/Redistrbutive Center
• +buffer environmental stresses
• +outliers as outposts
• +lots of storage in great houses
• ?can't see corn moving, at least easily
• -some outliers too far to resirtibute food
• -trade items seem to go in not out of canyon
• -roads seem non-economic
• Chiefdom, perhaps complex chielfdom or state
• +high status burials
• +1 child (ascribed status)
• +organization of labor, piling behavior
• +lots of storage or elite
• +outliers as colonies, military outposts
• +roads for armies
• -roads not straight
• -not big permanent population
• -inconsistent with ethnography
• -too few burials, esp. fancy burials
• Ritual Center, Mecca, perhaps oracle like Delphi, Pachacamac
• +roads symbolic
• +high status burials riitural leaders
• +outliers as ties to centers
• +roads for pilgrimages
• +feasing evidence. associated with pilgrimage
• +not big permanent population
• Chaco as Mesoamerican Outpost
• +Macaws and copper bells, platform mound
• -Mesoamerican goods are rare and need not come from central Mexico
• -Lack of plausible connection (Paquimé is not contemporaneous)
• -What does Mexico have to gain?
• Left with great debate of what is Chaco. Still don't know but the social/ritual arguments are gaining currency at the expense of the economic ones.