Great houses for whom?: Chacoan monumental architecture in cross-cultural, cognitive, and ethnohistorical perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper offers a new interpretation of Chacoan Great Houses, multistoried masonry structures of the 9th-12th century U.S. Southwest, using insights from animist ontologies, cognitive science, cross-cultural analysis, and ethnohistory. Throughout time and space, societies have constructed buildings to serve as dwelling places for animate, divine entities immanent in material objects. We call these structures god houses and briefly review examples from numerous societies across the ancient/extramodern worlds and indigenous U.S. Southwest. We then apply this understanding to argue that the architectural logic and material assemblages of Chacoan Great Houses, and especially Pueblo Bonito, suggest identification as god houses, a notion that rephrases the usual distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘ritual’ interpretations of Great Houses to consider the nature of the beings that dwelled within them. Our argument enriches investigations of the Chaco world by highlighting the role of religion and relations with non-human beings in the development of monumental architecture, regional organization, and inequality in the precontact U.S. Southwest.