Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park and World Heritage Site which contains the densest and most exceptional concentration of large pueblos in the American Southwest. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a relatively inaccessable valley cut by the Chaco Wash. The park preserves one of America's most fascinating cultural and historic areas.

File:Chacoan corner doorway Pueblo Bonito Chaco National Park New Mexico developed circa A.D. 1050.jpg

Chacoan corner doorway in Pueblo Bonito. Created circa AD 1050

Between AD 850 and 1250, Chaco Canyon was a major center of ancestral Puebloan culture. It was a hub of ceremony, trade, and administration for the prehistoric Four Corners area - unlike anything before or since. Chaco is remarkable for its monumental public and ceremonial buildings, and its distinctive architecture. Building construction, and creating the associated Chacoan roads, ramps, dams, and mounds, required a great deal of well organized and skillful planning, designing, resource gathering, and construction.

The Chacoan cultural sites are fragile and irreplaceable and represent a significant part of America's cultural heritage. At least one of the sites in the park, Fajada Butte, has been closed to the public due to fears of erosion caused by tourists. The sites are part of the sacred homeland of Pueblo Indian peoples of New Mexico, the Hopi Indians of Arizona, and the Navajo Indians of the Southwest, all of whom continue to respect and honor them.

Park History

In 1949, Chaco Canyon National Monument was created on lands in Chaco Canyon deeded from the University of New Mexico. In return for the land grant, the University maintained scientific research rights to the area. By 1959, the National Park Service had constructed the park visitor center, staff housing, and campgrounds. In the 1970's, Dr. Robert H. Lister and Dr. James Judge established the "Chaco Center," a division for cultural research, as a joint project between the University of New Mexico and the Park Service. A number of multi-disciplinary research projects, archaeological surveys, and limited excavations began during this time. The Chaco Center extensively surveyed the Chacoan "roads", well constructed footpaths radiating out from the central canyon. Research results at Pueblo Alto and other sites dramatically altered the academic interpretation of the Chacoan culture and this area of the American Southwest.

The richness of the cultural remains at park sites led to the expansion of the small National Monument into the Chaco Canyon National Historical Park in December 1980. An additional 13,000 acres were added to the park. To protect Chacoan sites on adjacent Bureau of Land Management and Navajo Nation lands, the Park Service developed the multi-agency Chaco Culture Archaeological Protection Site program.

Cultural history

Archaeologists identify the first people in this area as hunter gatherers called Basketmakers living, by approximately 900 B.C., at sites such as Atlatl Cave and Shabik'eshchee Village. These people remained in the area, going through several cultural stages, until about A.D. 700, when small, one-storied, masonry pueblos began to be built. These structures have been identified as characteristic of the Early Pueblo People. By A.D. 900, Pueblo population was growing and the communities expanded into larger, but more closely compacted pueblos. There is strong evidence of a canyon wide turquoise processing and trading industry dating from the tenth century. At this time, the first section of the spectacular Pueblo Bonito complex was built, beginning with one curved row of rooms near the north wall.

However, the meticulously designed buildings characteristic of the larger Canyon complex did not emerge until about A.D. 1030. The Chacoan people combined pre-planned architectural designs, astronomical alignments, geometry, landscaping, and engineering to create an ancient urban center of spectacular public architecture. Researchers have concluded that the complex may have had a relatively small residential population, with larger groups assembling only temporarily for annual events and ceremonies. Smaller sites, apparently more residential in character, are scattered around the Great Houses in in Chaco canyon.

The extended Ancient Pueblo community also began to experience a population and building boom about this time. By A.D. 1115, at least seventy outlying pueblos with characteristic Chacoan architecture had been built within the 25,000 square-mile area of the San Juan Basin. Researchers debate the function of these outlying settlements. Some suggest they may have been more than agriculture communities, perhaps acting as trading posts or as ceremonial sites.

Many outliers are connected to the central canyon and to one another by the enigmatic Chacoan "roads." Extending up to sixty miles, in generally straight lines, these roads appear to have been extensively surveyed and engineered. Common "road" characteristics include a depressed bed between twenty-five to forty feet wide with edges defined by rock edging or curbing. When necessary, the roads continued on their course over obstacles, using steep stone stairways and rock ramps. Although the "roads'" overall function may never be known, scientists speculate that they were used to transport building materials or for ceremonial processions.

The cohesive system that characterized Chaco Canyon began to break down about A.D. 1140, perhaps in response to a severe region wide drought. Outlying communities began to disappear and, by the end of the century, the buildings in the central canyon had been abandoned. Archaeological and cultural evidence leads scientists to believe people from this region migrated both south and east to the valleys and drainages of the Little Colorado River and the Rio Grande.

Nomadic Southern Athapaskan speaking peoples, given the name Navajo by the Spanish, succeeded the Pueblo people in this region by approximately AD 1620 to 1650. Ute tribal groups also frequented this region, primarily during hunting and raiding activities. The modern Navajo Nation lies north of Chaco Canyon, and many Navajo (more appropriately known as the Diné) live in surrounding areas.

Chacoan Great Houses

The Chacoans built an amazing urban ceremonial center along a nine mile stretch of canyon floor. Nine Great Houses lie nestled along the north side of Chaco Wash at the base of massive sandstone mesas. Additional Great Houses are found on mesa tops or in nearby washes or drainage areas. The fourteen known Great Houses are arranged in geographic order, beginning at the head of the canyon, near the Chaco River, and traveling down through steep canyon walls to the end of Chaco Wash.

• Panasco Blanco: this arc shaped Great House was built in five distinct stages, beginning in AD 900 and ending in approximately AD 1125. A well known cliff painting nearby may record an astronomical event, the sighting of a supernova in July AD 1054.

• Casa Chiquita: this village was expanded in the late 1100's. Architecture and design show significant change at this late period. Open plazas disappeared, large blocks of stone were used in masonry and kiva design was in the Mesa Verde tradition.

• Nuevo or New Alto:

• Pueblo Alto: located near the central area of Chaco Canyon, on the mesa flat above Pueblo Bonito, this Great House was begun in AD 1020 to 1050. This location made the community visable to most of the inhabitants of the San Juan Basin. The community was central to a bead and turguoise processing industry that influenced the development of all villages in the canyon. Chert tool production was also common.

• Kin Kletso: this medium size town, located half a mile west of Pueblo Bonito, shows strong evidence of construction and occupation by Pueblo peoples from the northern San Juan Basin. Its rectangular shape and design is related to the Pueblo II cultural group, rather than the Pueblo III style or its Chacoan variant. It contains about 55 rooms, four ground floor kivas and a tower which may have functioned as a kiva or religous center. Evidence of an obsidian production industry were discovered here. The village was completed in the late 1100's.

• Pueblo del Arroyo: begun between AD 1050 to 1075, and completed in the early 12th century, this Great House is located near Pueblo Bonito at the side drainage known as South Gap.

• Pueblo Bonito: the largest Great House, covers almost two acres and incorporates at least 650 rooms. In parts of the village, the structure was four stories high. The builder's use of core and veneer architecture and multi-story construction produced massive masonry walls as much as three feet (1 meter) thick. Pueblo Bonito is divided into two sections by a wall running north to south through the central plaza. A Great Kiva is placed on either side of the wall, creating a symmetrical pattern common to many of the Great Houses.

• Chetro Ketl: located near Pueblo Bonito, this Great House has a roughly similar D-shape, but is slightly smaller. Begun in AD 1020 to 1050, it contains between 450 and 550 rooms and just a single Great Kiva. Scientists estimate that construction on this house alone took 29,135 person-hours.

• Casa Rinconada, the Great Kiva: this Great Kiva, a large enclosed area for religious activity and ceremony, is somewhat isolated from the rest of Chaco Canyon. It is on the south side of Chaco Wash, adjacent to a Chacoan road moving up steep stairs to the top of the sandstone mesa. The kiva stands alone, with no residential or support structures, and once had a thirty nine foot passageway from the underground kiva to several above ground levels.

• Tsin Kletzin:

• Hungo Pavi: located just a mile from Una Vida, this Great House measured 872 feet in circumfrance. Initial explorations established a count of 72 rooms on the ground floor, with structures reaching four stories in height. One large circular kiva has been identified.

• Kin Nahasbas:

• Una Vida: one of the three earliest Great Houses with construction beginning near AD 900. It shares a arc or D-shape design with its contemporaries, Panasco Blanco and Pueblo Bonito, but has a unique "dog leg" addition made necessary by topography. Una Vida is located at a major side drainage into the canyon, near Gallo Wash.

• Wijiji: the smallest of the great houses at just over 100 rooms, its construction is characteristic of Chacoan design after AD 1100 - 1110. It appears this house was built in a single five year period.

Major outlying communities to the north include Salmon Ruin and Aztec Ruins, near Farmington, New Mexico.

Reference

• Frazier, Kendrick. People of Chaco: A Canyon and Its Culture. W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1986. ISBN 0-393-30496-5.

• Noble, David Grant, editor. New Light on Chaco Canyon. School of American Research, Sante Fe, New Mexico, 1985.

• Plog, Stephen. Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest. Thames and London, LTD, London, England, 1997. ISBN 0-500-27939-X.

External Link

US National Park Service: Chaco Culture National Historical Park [1]