Chaco-Era Site Clustering and the Concept of Communities

Abstract

ABSTRACTBetween about A.D. 860 and 1150, settlements in the Four Corners region most commonly consisted of dusters of small houses surrounding Chacoan great houses or great kivas, and archaeologists have come to refer to these settlements as “communities.” This article summarizes the concept of community as used in Chacoan studies and, based on data from 217 Chaco-era (A.D. 860–1150) site dusters, evaluates the current state of knowledge about what have been identified as Chacoan communities and presents some parameters for Chacoan communities based on what is now known. Chacoan site clusters were variable in the number of great houses and great kivas per duster, the size of great houses, the spatial extent of site clusters, and population. Most site dusters were not large enough to have been reproductively self-sustaining communities, and they were not spatially bounded nor strongly socially bounded. The organization of individual Chacoan site dusters was rapidly changing, and the overall pattern of Chacoan organization of site clusters was a short-lived phenomenon.