Great Kivas Research Articles

Great Kivas and Community Integration at the Harris Site, Southwestern New Mexico

Great kivas served as important ritual spaces and played significant roles in community integration throughout the Pithouse period (AD 550–1000) occupation of the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico. This article uses data from excavations at the Harris site, a large pithouse village located in the Mimbres Valley, to explore the role of great kivas and an associated plaza in community integration as the village grew, extended family households formed, and social distinctions developed. Data from excavations of sequentially used great kivas surrounding the plaza along with household data from domestic structures are used to examine the role of ritual space during the Pithouse period.

Probabilities of designed locations of ceremonial foci: the Chaco Meridian, temple IV at Tikal, and a large-scale sacred Adena river landscape

ABSTRACT Considering that prehistoric cultures may have had the socio-religious need and technical ability to create accurate geometric patterns across a large landscape, limited ethnographic and archaeologic evidence are reviewed. Simple but accurate land surveying is discussed. Since any set of existing sites at larger scales coincidentally creates accurate three-point alignments and right-angles, the critical research problem attempts to distinguish designed from random geometry. Unpublished patterns involving great kivas in Chaco Canyon and Temple IV at Tikal are tested for probabilities of design. The more expansive third test considers the location of 26 prominent Adena mounds in relation to 32 river confluence points and four highest mountains in a geographic area some 900 × 1200 km, just slightly larger than a Chacoan world. In 14 test boxes modeling the locations of the 26 mounds, 1000 sets of random points replace equal numbers in each box. Each set is searched for numbers of three-point alignments and ninety-degree angles at or under 0.10º accuracy. Chaco and Tikal tests show a strong likelihood of design at these sites; in the Adena, data indicate a high probability that some number of existing patterns were intentionally surveyed.

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.

A total viewshed approach to local visibility in the Chaco World

The Chacoan great houses and great kivas of the U.S. Southwest are monumental, both in their scale and in conveying meaning. Visibility is key to understanding how and by whom that meaning was experienced. Although often discussed in Chaco studies, visibility has been infrequently tested. Here, the authors consider 430 great house and great kiva locations, and evaluate their visibility within their local landscapes. Using a total viewshed approach, they provide new evidence to suggest that great houses, but not great kivas, were often placed to be highly visible to individuals in the surrounding landscape. These patterns may speak to the social and physical properties of the structures.

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.

Public architecture as performance space in the prehispanic central southwest

Public or religious architecture in non-state societies has traditionally been interpreted as integrative, an assumption that has limited the ability of archaeologists to study religious change in these settings. We argue that considering such structures within their local historical contexts offers a better approach to understanding diversity in religious architecture. This study examines great kivas, large public or religious buildings in the prehispanic U.S. Southwest, as potential performance spaces, using structure size to estimate audience capacity relative to community size. We compare circular great kivas present along the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau with rectangular great kivas used in the Transition Zone to the south between the 11th and 14th centuries CE. The two traditions share certain similarities, and some great kivas in the area where the two traditions meet appear to be “hybrids.” However, examining great kivas as potential performance venues in relationship to the surrounding settlements suggests that the social roles played by rectangular and circular great kivas followed notably different historical trajectories. Although settlement size increased in both areas, circular great kivas became less restricted and more accessible through time, while the latest rectangular great kivas were probably less accessible and more exclusive than their forebears.

A spatial analysis of civic-ceremonial architecture in the central Mesa Verde Region, United States

This study analyzes the spatial and temporal patterning of civic-ceremonial structures in the central Mesa Verde region of the northern Southwest to assess changing patterns of leadership in Pueblo society. Great kivas, as the most ubiquitous and persistent form of Pueblo public architecture in the area prior to 1280 CE, provide a durable means of assessing community membership and for analyzing how the introduction of other civic-ceremonial buildings may reflect shifts in public space and leadership strategies over time. It is suggested here that great kivas represent a fundamental and enduring symbol of community group assembly that underwent changes over time, the most profound of which occurred in the final decades prior to migration from the area in the late 1200s CE. The overall constellation of civic-ceremonial structures over time indicates altering leadership strategies just prior to the depopulation of the region.

The Kin Hochoi East Road

Kin Hochoi is a Chacoan great house community located in the Puerco Gap, a canyon eroded through the southern Chuska Mountains by the Puerco River. Within the Kin Hochoi community the “East Road” is defined by a 10-meter-wide linear swale connecting the great house to the great kiva, suggesting it was an integral part of the community architecture. Like many other Chacoan roads the Kin Hochoi East Road is excavated over a short distance and has not been previously identified as a longer feature. However, recent ground surveys of associated archaeological sites in the surrounding area indicate that the road extends at least 20 kilometers further to the northeast following a straight line through the Puerco Gap and Defiance Draw Valley. Based on ceramics at the site, construction at Kin Hochoi occurred over many centuries with the great house and great kiva constructed during the Pueblo II period. Smaller architecture and sherd scatters along the extended road to the northeast indicate that this part of the road was constructed and/or in use during the Pueblo II and Pueblo III periods. This supports the model that the short road formalized by excavation within the Kin Hochoi community is part of a longer and possibly regional route.

From great kivas to great houses: Community formation and social dynamics in the southern Chuska Valley, New Mexico

Understanding the sociopolitical contexts behind the construction of outlying Chacoan great houses requires a close examination of the relationships between great houses and their neighboring communities. Changes in household-ritual organization and socioeconomic interactions within the Figueredo great house community are used to examine the emergence of social complexity in the southern Chuska Valley. Long-term trends observed in settlement and economic organization are evaluated using a competition model to understand the social dynamics of local community development. Various lines of evidence suggest the residents of the Figueredo community comprised a multiethnic population that maintained a series of diverse socioeconomic interactions across the Four Corners region.

Mimbres Great Kivas and Plazas During the Three Circle Phase, ca. AD 850–1000

Most Mimbres villages had a great kiva that opened onto and was accessed through a plaza area during the Three Circle phase. In the few cases where these plazas have been excavated, secondary cremations and related artifact caches were present in some quantity. Use of plazas for interment of cremated individuals continued into the Mimbres Classic period, although great kivas were no longer built and used. The plazas remained in use, still surrounded by buildings which were by then fully surface pueblos.

Ritual Construction, Use and Retirement of Mimbres Three Circle Phase Great Kivas

Three Circle phase great kivas in the Mimbres area of southwest New Mexico have been the subject of new field investigations and reanalysis of data from earlier excavations. The findings have led to an enhanced and more detailed understanding of physical changes in these special buildings during the Three Circle phase, particularly with regard to dating and ritual behaviors associated with construction, use, and formal retirement.

THE HARLAN GREAT KIVA SITE: CIVIC ARCHITECTURE AND COMMUNITY PERSISTENCE IN THE GOODMAN POINT AREA OF SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO

Great kivas in the Southwest have long been studied as structures representative of community organization and location. Recent work at the Harlan Great Kiva site, in the Goodman Point Unit of Hovenweep National Monument, suggests that some great kivas served as social anchors, effectively tethering a community to the landscape for generations. Different building episodes at the Harlan Great Kiva site correspond to the initiation, development, and restructuring of the associated community spanning about 250 years. These observations suggest the site may serve as a proxy for related developments in the community, and is likely reflective of a persistent community identity that was constructed and altered by generations of Pueblo people in the Goodman Point Area.

Residential versus civic use in the Pueblo II-III period: A case study from the Harlan Great Kiva site in the Goodman Point area of southwestern Colorado

Sites recorded during survey that were occupied or used for long periods of time often present problems in determining when particular activities may have occurred, and what types of activities correspond to which periods of use. The Harlan Great Kiva site, in southwestern Colorado, provides an opportunity to examine sequential residential and civic use of one ancestral Pueblo period site over a period of 250 to 300 years. Pottery recovered during test excavations suggests that it may be possible to recognize changing types of use from surface remains recorded during survey. This analysis may prove useful for survey-level studies of long-lived sites with recognizable civic architecture at the surface.

Ritual Change and the Distant: Mesoamerican Iconography, Scarlet Macaws, and Great Kivas in the Mimbres Region of Southwestern New Mexico

AbstractThe Mimbres Classic period (A .D. 1000–1130) in southwestern New Mexico was marked by dramatic and complex changes. The use of Great Kivas ended, and macaws and Mesoamerican-inspired iconography appeared. We argue that these events were systematically related and signify observable changes in Mimbres ritual economy. The presence of macaws, images of macaws, and representations of characters and motifs from the Hero Twins saga suggest that ideology accompanied macaws north from the Gulf Coast of Mexico. We recognize and discuss episodes and icons from the saga painted on Mimbres black-on-white bowls and propose that the macaws and narrative reached the Mimbres region through direct acquisition rather than down-the-line trade. This research has significant implications for the importance of long distance travel to faraway places and interaction with distant peoples, Mesoamerican-southwestern United States relationships, changing religious practices in non-hierarchical societies, and the adoption of extrinsic elements into local settings.

The Role of Ritual Variability in Social Negotiations of Early Communities: Great Kiva Homogeneity and Heterogeneity in the Mogollon Region of the North American Southwest

Religion and religious buildings play critical roles in the social negotiations that surround early village formation. Although religion and the buildings or spaces that house concomitant ceremonies may certainly serve to bring people together under a unified creed, ritual activities also provide settings that people can manipulate to their own ends. Great Kivas appear to have been a major locus of supra-family rituals in the Mogollon area from A.D.1 to 1000. We examine Great Kiva architecture and feature variability across three major areas and three time periods to understand the degree to which there was similarity in ritual practice across the region. The patterns of variation suggest that people took opportunities to make such buildings more individual and more responsive to a family’s or small group’s particular purposes.

Ancestors and the sun: astronomy, architecture and culture at Chaco Canyon

AbstractThree architectural traditions with astronomical associations have been identified among the ‘Great Houses’ and ‘Great Kivas’ of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Great Houses and one Great Kiva built during the height of construction activity (AD 1020–1100), the Bonito Phase, include front-facing south-southeast (SSE) orientations, and cardinal north-south and/or east-west (NS/EW) alignments. We present ethnographic material supporting our previous proposal that the SSE orientation is probably linked to migration traditions and ancestor veneration. We also confirm that a majority of Late Bonito Phase Great Houses (built after A.D. 1100) exhibit a third astronomical tradition: five of the principal in-canyon Great Houses built at that time were positioned at or near observing locations that could have functioned as solstice calendrical stations. Through use of these locations for public ceremonies, the Chacoan elite could demonstrate astronomical knowledge and ritual power. These findings provide support for Van Dyke's hypothesis that construction during this period was intended to reinvigorate a faltering system. One ‘Chaco halo’ Great House, Bis sa'ani, incorporates all three traditions. We suggest that temporal analysis of these traditions improves understanding of migration paths and shifting balances of power and social dominance among ancestral Pueblo culture groups.

ROOFING AN EARLY ANASAZI GREAT KIVA: ANALYSIS OF AN ARCHITECTURAL MODEL

Great kivas played an important role in the social and ritual integration of prehistoric Pueblo societies in the northern Southwest. Early great kivas are found throughout the region, and a partially excavated example from Grass Mesa Village is used to develop an architectural roof design for a Pueblo I great kiva. Based on this design, the required diameters of the primary beams, secondary beams, and roof-support columns are calculated, and the construction costs are estimated using results from replicative building experiments. Based on climate and vegetation reconstructions for the area around Grass Mesa Village, it appears that the necessary materials were available locally. The results indicate that the construction project would require approximately 8,850 person-hours. Based on probabilistic estimates, the population of Grass Mesa Village at the time of great kiva construction (late A.D. 700s) was 38 to 58 households. If 40 households each contributed one laborer for 50 hours per week, the project could have been completed in less than five weeks. Because the Grass Mesa great kiva was the only structure of its kind in the area at that time, a much larger regional population could have participated in construction and completed it even more quickly.

A BIGHORN SHEEP TRAP AT EL MALPAIS NATIONAL MONUMENT, NEW MEXICO

This paper examines an unusual series of features inside a lava tube that may have been used for trapping bighorn sheep, once prominent on the Grants, New Mexico, lava fields. The lava tube reveals both prehistoric and historic use, although the bighorn sheep trap cannot be directly dated. Dendrochronological samples from the various features suggest that the trap could date as early as the puebloan settlement of the area in the A.D. 900s and 1000s, when the Chacoan greathouse and great kiva were established at nearby Las Ventanas (Marshall et al. 1979:187-190; Powers and Orcutt 2005:74-81). Subsequent use of the trap is also indicated, and it may have survived use into the early historic period in the A.D. 1700s and later.

RUDD CREEK PUEBLO: A LATE TULAROSA PHASE VILLAGE IN EAST CENTRAL ARIZONA

Rudd Creek Pueblo is a late Tularosa phase (A.D. 1225-1300) village located in the Upper Little Colorado region south of Springerville, Arizona. In 1996, Arizona State University, in cooperation with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, conducted archaeological fieldwork at Rudd Creek. This paper summarizes the results of that field season, which included the clearing of disturbed fill from a number of looted rooms, as well as limited test excavations in two great kivas, undisturbed rooms, and extramural areas. Comparison of the archaeology of Rudd Creek Pueblo with other Tularosa phase settlements in the Mogollon highlands along the Arizona-New Mexico border highlights key dimensions of variability in thirteenth century settlement in this area. Our investigations suggest that future research focusing on Tularosa phase settlements has the potential to contribute greatly to current debates in Southwest archaeology concerning migration, exchange, and population aggregation.

Hopewell geometric earthworks: a case study in the referential and experiential meaning of monuments

Archaeological landscapes with dispersed settlements often contain widely spaced, morphologically similar, non-residential monuments (e.g., Neolithic megaliths and enclosures, Eastern Woodlands conical burial mounds, Southwestern great kivas, and Hopewell geometric earthworks). These monuments are commonly interpreted as “village surrogates,” places at which members of a local, dispersed community gathered to express and reproduce social ties. Some applications of the village surrogate model have privileged referential meaning (what a monument symbolized) at the expense of experiential meaning (how monuments were experienced), obscuring important variability in relationships between monuments and use-groups. Focusing on a cluster of five likely contemporary Hopewell geometric earthworks in south-central Ohio, this paper emphasizes that the construction of monuments in dispersed settings was not always experienced as the aggregation of autonomous, isomorphic communities. An analysis of labor involved in earthwork construction demonstrates that in the Hopewell case, a very widely dispersed population, not exclusively affiliated with individual monuments, gathered repeatedly to build a related set of ceremonial centers. Parallels with the Chaco Phenomenon of northwest New Mexico are explored, and the importance of distinguishing between referential and experiential meaning in the broader study of prehistoric monuments is discussed.