Chaco Canyon Research Articles

Performance Space, Political Theater, and Audibility in Downtown Chaco

Chaco Canyon, NM, USA, was the center of an Ancestral Puebloan polity from approximately 850–1140 CE, and home to a dozen palatial structures known as “great houses” and scores of ritual structures called “great kivas”. It is hypothesized that the 2.5 km2 centered on the largest great house, Pueblo Bonito (i.e., “Downtown Chaco”), served as an open-air performance space for both political theater and sacred ritual. The authors used soundshed modeling tools within the Archaeoacoustics Toolbox to illustrate the extent of this performance space and the interaudibility between various locations within Downtown Chaco. Architecture placed at liminal locations may have inscribed sound in the landscape, physically marking the boundary of the open-air performance space. Finally, the implications of considering sound within political theater will be discussed.

Lead isotope ratios of Pueblo I lead-glazed ceramics and galena from Colorado and Pueblo II galena from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

The earliest glazes in the American Southwest were produced during the early Pueblo I period (ca. 750–850 CE) in the Upper San Juan region of Colorado. Petrographic and isotopic techniques were used to study these early glaze-painted pots and to address questions of production locales and procurement strategies. The results of this study identify the preferred source of lead utilized by the potters as originating in the Galena District, in the Lake City and Uncompahgre calderas, in the western San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Glaze paints from three locations in the Mesa Verde region were produced with galena from these deposits, indicating that even when potters were choosing to use different clays and temper, the source of lead remained the same. Galena ores from these deposits have additionally been identified at other locations, including Dillard, a Basketmaker III site in southwest Colorado and in Pueblo II contexts in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, indicating continuity in knowledge of distant lead sources.

Network analysis of intrasite material networks and ritual practice at Pueblo Bonito

The Chaco World, centered on the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, in the Southwestern U.S.A., was organized largely around ritual activities, including the use and deposition of a wide range of rare and unusual objects. The great houses of Chaco Canyon were foundational in the development of these ritual activities. Biographical or assemblage-oriented approaches are well suited to studying ritual behavior and have been successfully applied to understanding religious ritual at Chacoan great houses, especially the site of Pueblo Bonito. While formal network analyses (and traditional statistical analyses) are typically used to evaluate relationships between archaeological sites, we argue that network analysis also has great utility in expanding existing biographical approaches to Chacoan ritual. Applying network methods to a network of general artifact classes (like turquoise or pipes) from different room contexts within Pueblo Bonito helps to understand the co-associations of objects grouped together through common use or deposition, likely in the course of ritual activities. These co-associations help expand our knowledge of ritual behavior within Pueblo Bonito, indicating distinctions between architectural spaces based on specialized ritual practices. This analysis also has important implications for Chacoan social organization, supporting existing arguments for a Chacoan house society model.

KINSHIP AND COMMUNITY IN THE NORTHERN SOUTHWEST: CHACO AND BEYOND

Archaeogenomic studies of a burial crypt in Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, have demonstrated the presence of an elite matrilineal descent group that spanned most of the 300+ years the great house was occupied, confirming, among other things, the deep antiquity of matrilineal ideologies among the Ancestral Pueblos of the northern Southwest. This article explores the sociopolitical implications of matrilineal descent, matrilocal residence, and Iroquois-Crow alliance structures among the Ancestral Pueblos of Chaco and elsewhere. It argues that matrilineal ideologies helped shape community forms and intercommunity relations throughout the Pueblo Southwest. It argues further that kinship provides insights into Chaco's eleventh-century expansion that dispersed “outlier” great houses over much of the southeastern Colorado Plateau. The article concludes with a call for archaeologists and cultural historians to pay more attention to kinship, the principal idiom of social, economic, and political relations in nonstate societies.

From enchantment toagencement: Archaeological engagements with pilgrimage

This commentary springs from insights gleaned from two sources. The first involves my archaeological research into the ancient pilgrimage center of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; the second includes lessons learned by walking the medieval Camino de Santiago. The four papers in this volume describe enchanting destinations reached by archaeological pilgrims engaged in ambulatory knowing. I frame my discussion of these papers using DeLeuzean concepts of assemblage/ agencement, emphasizing the emergent properties of pilgrimage, and underscoring how archaeologists can study pilgrims in motion.

A History of Cacao in West Mexico: Implications for Mesoamerica and U.S. Southwest Connections

Cacao economies in far western Mexico developed between AD 850/900 and 1350+ along with the adoption of a political–religious complex centered on the solar deity Xochipilli as the Aztatlan culture became integrated into expanding political, economic, and information networks of highland and southern Mesoamerica. The Xochipilli complex significantly transformed societies in the Aztatlan core zone of coastal Nayarit and Sinaloa and parts of Jalisco, Durango, Zacatecas, and Michoacan. West Mexican cacao was acquired in the U.S. Southwest by Chaco Canyon elites in New Mexico through macroregional prestige goods economies as Ancestral Pueblo societies became integrated into the Postclassic Mesoamerican world.

Dental Transfigurement and its Potential for Explaining the Evolution of Post-Archaic Indian Culture in the American Southwest

The term "dental transfirgurement" is suggested for the non-therapeutic modification of prehistoric teeth. In North America, prehistoric dental transfigurement was a common practice only in Mesoamerica. Hence, among the few explanations possible for the rare occurrences of dental transfigurement in the prehistoric American Southwest, the msot likely one is migration, that is, the actual presence of Mesoamericans who traveled to and subsequently died in the American Southwest. One case, especially, may contribute to understanding the rapid development of the large planned prehistoric towns in and around Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. This case, the oldest example of prehistoric American Southwest dental transfigurement known so far, was part of a mass burial in one of the rooms that N. M. Judd excavated at Pueblo Bonito - a room that Judd believed had been built during the initial phase of construction of this great Chacoan town.

Archaeogenomic evidence from the southwestern US points to a pre-Hispanic scarlet macaw breeding colony

Hundreds of scarlet macaw (Ara macao cyanoptera) skeletons have been recovered from archaeological contexts in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico (SW/NW). The location of these skeletons, >1,000 km outside their Neotropical endemic range, has suggested a far-reaching pre-Hispanic acquisition network. Clear evidence for scarlet macaw breeding within this network is only known from the settlement of Paquimé in NW dating between 1250 and 1450 CE. Although some scholars have speculated on the probable existence of earlier breeding centers in the SW/NW region, there has been no supporting evidence. In this study, we performed an ancient DNA analysis of scarlet macaws recovered from archaeological sites in Chaco Canyon and the contemporaneous Mimbres area of New Mexico. All samples were directly radiocarbon dated between 900 and 1200 CE. We reconstructed complete or near-complete mitochondrial genome sequences of 14 scarlet macaws from five different sites. We observed remarkably low genetic diversity in this sample, consistent with breeding of a small founder population translocated outside their natural range. Phylogeographic comparisons of our ancient DNA mitogenomes with mitochondrial sequences from macaws collected during the last 200 years from their endemic Neotropical range identified genetic affinity between the ancient macaws and a single rare haplogroup (Haplo6) observed only among wild macaws in Mexico and northern Guatemala. Our results suggest that people at an undiscovered pre-Hispanic settlement dating between 900 and 1200 CE managed a macaw breeding colony outside their endemic range and distributed these symbolically important birds through the SW.

What’s new in Chaco research?

This special section of Antiquity reports on new research on Chaco Canyon and its surrounding region in the northern U.S. Southwest. Two of the contributions are based on new excavations within Chaco Canyon—one at the largest great house of Pueblo Bonito by Patricia Crown and W.H. Wills (2018), and the other on Chaco’s water management by Vernon Scarborough et al. (2018). The second pair of articles are based on the regional data compilation and analyses of great houses and great kivas, which form part of the larger Chaco World. The article by Mills et al. (2018) applies social network analysis to a large database of ceramics to look at changing connectivity in the Chaco World over three centuries. Katherine Dungan et al. (2018) use an innovative total viewshed approach to examine when and to what degree great houses and great kivas were placed in visually prominent locations. This introduction reviews new findings of the past decade and contextualises the following four articles within the current literature. It does not provide a comprehensive review of the Chaco literature, and the reader is referred to other reviews, most recently by Plog (2010, 2018), Schachner (2015) and Plog et al. (2017). These can be compared with earlier syntheses (Mills 2002; Lekson 2006, 2009) to underscore the pace of new research.

Evaluating Chaco migration scenarios using dynamic social network analysis

Migration was a key social process contributing to the creation of the ‘Chaco World’ between AD 800 and 1200. Dynamic social network analysis allows for evaluation of several migration scenarios, and demonstrates that Chaco’s earliest ninth-century networks show interaction with areas to the west and south, rather than migration to the Canyon from the Northern San Juan. By the late eleventh century, Chaco Canyon was tied strongly to the Middle and Northern San Juan, while a twelfth-century retraction of networks separated the Northern and Southern San Juan areas prior to regional depopulation. Understanding Chaco migration is important for comprehending both its uniqueness in U.S. Southwest archaeology and for comparison with other case studies worldwide.

The complex history of Pueblo Bonito and its interpretation

Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon is one of the most iconic pre-Hispanic archaeological sites in the U.S. Southwest. Archaeologists refer to it as a great house in recognition of its massive scale, and often describe it as the centre of the Chaco world. Yet questions remain about Pueblo Bonito’s origins, sequence of construction, duration of occupation and abandonment. Here, the authors present new research that helps to clarify the early phases of occupation, and illuminates some of the problems inherent in reconstructing a building that was a perennial work in progress.

Water uncertainty, ritual predictability and agricultural canals at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

The Pueblo population of Chaco Canyon during the Bonito Phase (AD 800–1130) employed agricultural strategies and water-management systems to enhance food cultivation in this unpredictable environment. Scepticism concerning the timing and effectiveness of this system, however, remains common. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating of sediments and LiDAR imaging, the authors located Bonito Phase canal features at the far west end of the canyon. Additional ED-XRF and strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analyses confirm the diversion of waters from multiple sources during Chaco’s occupation. The extent of this water-management system raises new questions about social organisation and the role of ritual in facilitating responses to environmental unpredictability.

Ritual Fauna and Social Organization at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon

Chaco Canyon served as a regional center for the Northern U.S. Southwest from AD 850–1130. Reconstructions of the social organization of great houses within the canyon have varied, with models alternately drawing on ethnographically described “Eastern” (predominantly moiety-based) or “Western” (predominantly clan-based) Pueblo organizational systems. Ethnographic research demonstrates the significance of animals in Pueblo social and ritual life, and associations between social groups and certain animals remain important today. Whole animals, skulls, and claws are heavily involved in ritual practice, the organization of which is intricately intertwined with social organization. In this paper, we examine spatial and contextual patterns in the deposition of these remains to understand social organization at the best-studied Chaco great house, Pueblo Bonito. Two central patterns emerge: distinctions in the taxa deposited within the eastern and western halves of the pueblo, and the long-term significance and restricted use of macaws in the foundational northern arc.

Soil analysis in discussions of agricultural feasibility for ancient civilizations: A critical review and reanalysis of the data and debate from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

Questions about how archaeological populations obtained basic food supplies are often difficult to answer. The application of specialist techniques from non-archaeological fields typically expands our knowledge base, but can be detrimental to cultural interpretations if employed incorrectly, resulting in problematic datasets and erroneous conclusions not easily caught by the recipient archaeological community. One area where this problem has failed to find resolution is Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, the center of one of the New World’s most vibrant ancient civilizations. Discussions of agricultural feasibility and its impact on local population levels at Chaco Canyon have been heavily influenced by studies of soil salinity. A number of researchers have argued that salinized soils severely limited local agricultural production, instead suggesting food was imported from distant sources, specifically the Chuska Mountains. A careful reassessment of existing salinity data as measured by electrical conductivity reveals critical errors in data conversion and presentation that have misrepresented the character of the area’s soil and its potential impact on crops. We combine all available electrical conductivity data, including our own, and apply multiple established conversion methods in order to estimate soil salinity values and evaluate their relationship to agricultural productivity potential. Our results show that Chacoan soils display the same salinity ranges and spatial variability as soils in other documented, productive fields in semi-arid areas. Additionally, the proposed large-scale importation of food from the Chuska Mountains region has serious social implications that have not been thoroughly explored. We consider these factors and conclude that the high cost and extreme inflexibility of such a system, in combination with material evidence for local agriculture within Chaco Canyon, make this scenario highly unlikely. Both the soil salinity and archaeological data suggest that there is no justification for precluding the practice of local agriculture within Chaco Canyon.

New evidence of ancient parasitism among Late Archaic and Ancestral Puebloan residents of Chaco Canyon

Archaeoparasitology provides a unique perspective on the health and habits of ancient cultures through the identification of parasite remains in archaeological materials. We identified eggs of the human whipworm, Trichuris trichiura, in coprolites recovered from Late Archaic (1926–1751cal.BCE) and Ancestral Puebloan (1039–1163cal.CE) sites in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Our findings represent the earliest record of T. trichiura in North America, the first record of the species from Chaco Canyon, and the first record of a macroparasite from a Late Archaic site (Atlatl Cave) on the Colorado Plateau. T. trichiura is common in the global archaeoparasitology record, but until now it was not known to have infected Ancestral Puebloans. Environmental barriers to transmission and lack of contact with infected Mesoamerican cultures have previously been used to explain the absence of this species from the Southwest. The new evidence of T. trichiura presented here raises questions about the cultural context which led to the arrival and persistence of this parasite in both a Late Archaic cave and an Ancestral Puebloan great house at Chaco Canyon. We propose that the moisture requirements of T. trichiura transmission may have been met through anthropogenic modification of the local environment, and that the presence of this species at Chaco Canyon suggests contact with infected Mesoamerican cultures. We also report the presence of the pinworm, Enterobius vermicularis, and unidentified larval nematodes in the Chaco Canyon archaeological record.

Ritual Deposition of Avifauna in the Northern Burial Cluster at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon

Birds play an important role in modern and historic Puebloan ceremonialism, with feathers, wings, stuffed birds, and live birds used for ceremonies, sacrifices, and creation of ritual paraphernalia. Archaeological evidence suggests birds played an ideological and ritual role for some prehispanic Southwestern groups as well. Here, we explore the use of avian remains for ritual purposes at Pueblo Bonito by presenting new evidence from the northern burial cluster. Drawing on multiple quantitative measures, we establish the dissimilarity of this assemblage to other Chacoan sites. We demonstrate that an unusually wide variety of avian species was deposited in the northern burial cluster, particularly wing elements that may reflect wing fan deposition. These findings improve our understanding of ritual life at Pueblo Bonito and also show the utility of using both qualitative and quantitative data to create a more accurate understanding of past ceremonial activity.

Walking Away from Chaco Canyon

Walking Away from Chaco Canyon

On the Cover: <em>Cross My Heart</em>

On the CoverCross My Heart RAEchel Running (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Cross My Heart. RAEchel Running. Courtesy: the artist. In 2006 I traveled to Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico, on a three-day assignment to photograph master potter Juan Quezada, in Mata Ortiz. And I stayed for five years. Over that span of time, I witnessed the militarization of the US-Mexico border and the implementation of Arizona's SB 1070, which enabled the profiling of Mexicans in the United States. In Mexico, I also met and learned from local artisans, ranchers, farmers, and anthropologists, and came to see deep connections between Mesoamerica and the greater US Southwest. My first time out on the Arizona border, documenting the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths as they put out caches of water for migrants, I found this bra in the desert and instantly wept. I remember picking it up gingerly. How it pained me to wonder [End Page 5] what had happened to the young woman it belonged to. I imagine her mother giving it to her, its perfect virgin whiteness, soiled, stained, destroyed by the dirt rubbed into it violently. It lay there forgotten and discarded. I remembered the many faces I'd seen of a young woman whose heart carries the dream of America in her tender breast. The pink crosses of Juárez mark the signs of the hundreds of disappeared women of the borderlands. The crosses look like embroidery or scars of a badly sewn wound. Yet it's soft as the curve of the earthly form of a newly budding woman, the details of youth; tender flowers are placed across the harsh landscape between two countries both divided and united by lines on a map, and by the bloodlines and love lines we all share. Though it may seem futile, it is necessary to give voice to the voiceless. The land holds the stories of the ancientmigrations and the plight of the immigrants. It is tragic and it is beautiful with all the seasons of life, like a love song full of longing. The birds still migrate and people pray for rain up and down the Americas just as they did thousands of years ago. Hope is like water in the desert. I don't want to forget her. Daughters. Sisters. They were once someone's baby girl. I want to water their dreams. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Migration Series no. 1. RAEchel Running. Courtesy: the artist. My migration series explores the historical and symbolic connections of Mesoamerica, the US-Mexico borderlands, and the Greater Southwest. In my photographs I combine contemporary issues with the symbols of ancient cultures such as the Pochtecas, the trader priests who migrated across the Americas carrying stories and corn kernels, chocolate, macaws to the north and turquoise to the south. These also feature symbols of the Quetzalcoatl, the rain god embodied as a plumed serpent, and Thaloc, the wind god, as documented in pictographs and ceramics traded over the millennia. The T-door and cloud-shaped geometrics designs are seen in the complex architecture and designs in art and ceramics from the land of the Maya to the Olmec and Toltec sites [End Page 6] of Teotihuacan; to the outlier ancient city of Paquimé; to Chaco Canyon and the pueblos of New Mexico; to Mesa Verde, Colorado; and to Wupatki sites in Arizona. Walls of separation cannot stop the natural pattern of the world. The threads of human migration and history are interwoven into new designs. Today on the arid mesas and adobe pueblos, corn is still farmed in the old ways. In the ceremonial dances, turquoise, a dash of red macaw and eagle feathers, flash against gathering rain clouds; the gourds and sea shells clink rhythmically, resounding up and down the spine of the Americas, prayers to help keep our world in balance. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Migration Series no. 2. RAEchel Running. Courtesy: the artist. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Migration Series no. 3. RAEchel Running. Courtesy: the artist. [End Page 7] RAEchel Running RAEchel Running, of Afro...

Source & Sourceability: Towards a probabilistic framework for dendroprovenance based on hypothesis testing and Bayesian inference

Long-distance procurement of timber was necessary for the construction of Ancestral Pueblo Great Houses in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. A number of higher-altitude tree sources were available within 30–70 km, though some isolated trees may have been acquired more locally. Highly regional tree ring variations enable matching some construction timbers to their source. Here, a method is developed which 1) develops a rejection criteria for ruling out sources for a tree ring sequence, 2) quantifies the relative spatial representation of a given source sequence, and 3) applies Bayes theorem to calculate posterior probabilities of source attribution. The application of this method in part supports past sourcing work, but indicates that the majority (59–64%) of timbers cannot be ascribed with even low confidence to the most common high-altitude sources. This analysis supports a model of diverse tree acquisition from a number of different sources, though with high uncertainty for a majority of timbers used in the present study.

Refining Potential Source Regions via Combined Maize Niche Modeling and Isotopes: a Case Study from Chaco Canyon, NM, USA

The application of geochemical sourcing methods to archaeological questions continues to grow, as does the need for innovation in applying these methods. The process of sourcing materials is to rule out potential areas in favor of the most likely origin. It will foreseeably remain true that additional data could reveal other potential sources for an artifact. However, the use of multiple methods to further refine potential sources should not be neglected. In this paper, we use maize niche modeling in tandem with isotopic data to refine possible source regions of archaeological deer from Chaco Canyon, NM, USA (ca. AD 800–1250). Previous research on this prehistoric community demonstrated an extensive non-local procurement system where small mammals were garden-hunted in plots lying > 40 km from the canyon and the procurement of deer from upper elevations at > 90 km. The upper elevation procurement of deer will be tested by adding carbon isotopes and maize niche modeling to previously published strontium and oxygen isotopic data. As browsers with an affinity for maize, deer harvested in low to mid elevations within the maize farming niche should have carbon isotope ratios reflecting C4 plant consumption. Growing degree days in this region place the most salient limits on the elevation of maize production and define the region corresponding to a maize-free diet. Analyses of archaeofaunal deer from Pueblo Bonito indicate that hunting occurred at a higher elevation than the maize farming niche. These results demonstrate the utility of combining geochemical sourcing methods with paleoenvironmental modeling.