The Center of Chacoan Culture
Chaco Canyon’s great houses, roads, and astronomy, and what its role might have been. This reading leaves out the list of tribes that the park honors.
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Chaco Canyon has a wild and beautiful high-desert landscape. Still, it is an unlikely place for a major center of ancestral Puebloan culture to take root and flourish. It has long winters, short growing seasons, and very little rain. Yet this valley was the center of a thriving culture a thousand years ago. Its architecture was on a monumental scale. Its community life was complex. Its community social organization was highly developed. And its commerce reached far. Together these created a cultural vision unlike any other seen before or since.
The cultural flowering of the Chacoan people began in the mid 800s and lasted more than 300 years. We can see it clearly in the grand scale of the architecture. They used masonry techniques that were unique for their time. With them they built massive stone buildings called Great Houses. These had many stories and hundreds of rooms, much larger than any they had built before. The buildings were planned from the start. This was different from the usual practice of adding rooms to existing buildings as needed. Building on some of these structures went on for decades and even centuries. Each Great House is unique, but all share architectural features that make them recognizable as Chacoan.
During the middle and late 800s, the great houses of Pueblo Bonito, Una Vida, and Peñasco Blanco were built. Hungo Pavi, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo Alto, and others followed. These structures were often lined up with the sun, the moon, and the cardinal directions. Lines of sight between the great houses allowed communication. Advanced astronomical markers, communication features, water control devices, and formal earthen mounds surrounded them. The buildings were placed in a landscape surrounded by sacred mountains, mesas, and shrines. These still have deep spiritual meaning for the descendants of the Chacoans.
By 1050, Chaco had become the ceremonial, administrative, and economic center of the San Juan Basin. Its sphere of influence was large. Dozens of great houses in Chaco Canyon were connected by roads to more than 150 great houses across the region. It is thought that the great houses were not traditional farming villages with large populations. They may instead have been impressive examples of “public architecture.” They were used from time to time for ceremony, commerce, and trading, when temporary populations came to the canyon for these events.
What was at the heart of this great social experiment? Pueblo descendants say that Chaco was a special gathering place. Many peoples and clans came together there to share their ceremonies, traditions, and knowledge. Chaco is central to the origins of several Navajo clans and ceremonies. Chaco is also a lasting puzzle for researchers. Was Chaco the hub of a turquoise-trading network set up to get macaws, copper bells, shells, and other goods from distant lands? Did Chaco share out food and resources to growing populations when the climate failed them? Was Chaco “the center place,” binding a region together with a shared vision? We may never fully understand Chaco.
In the 1100s and 1200s, change came to Chaco. New building slowed, and Chaco’s role as a regional center shifted. Chaco’s influence continued at Aztec, Mesa Verde, the Chuska Mountains, and other centers to the north, south, and west. In time, the people moved away from Chacoan ways and migrated to new areas. They reorganized their world and eventually interacted with foreign cultures. Their descendants are the modern Southwest Indians. Many Southwest Indian people see Chaco as an important stop along their clans’ sacred migration paths. It is a spiritual place to be honored and respected.