Chacoan (Culture Keyword)
1-10 (10 Records)
This report describes development of the Chaco Project, a long-term program of archaeological and historical research centered on the cultural resources in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. The text summarizes the goals and objectives of the program and how it came to be managed. The early years of the project are described, including information from interviews with some of the individuals who shaped the project. Also described are problems which later emerged as the program grew and changed. This...
Ancestors in Cosmologies (2010)
This article discusses the role of ancestors in New World cosmologies. Specifically, it gives examples of how ancestors mediate cosmologies through sensory experiences, things, and places. In Eastern North America, ancestors were engaged in posts, bundles, stars, mounds, and temples. In the American Southwest, “conceptual packages” of wind, water, and breath represented the cosmological force shared by humans, ancestors, and places. Mesoamericans transformed the dead into ancestors by...
Archaeological Surveys of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (1981)
The Chaco Center became operational in 1971 as a joint venture of the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, and the University of New Mexico. Both organizations had been involved with the Chaco for many years prior to that time. Chaco Canyon National Monument was established in 1907 to protect and preserve its numerous, outstanding archeological resources for the benefit of the public. It has been administered by the National Park Service since 1916. The University of New...
A Biocultural Approach to Human Burials From Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (1986)
The study of human remains offers a unique perspective on prehistory. Environmental reconstructions can approximate the constraints of life in a particular area, but the examination of the human remains can measure the success of a population's adaptation to those conditions. Mortuary practices are a part of the cultural system that has seldom been studied by Southwestern archeologists. Too often biological and cultural aspects are treated as independent topics. The biological analyses do not...
Casas Grandes and the Chaco Canyon Cultures (1975)
As early as 1936, Edgar L. Hewett suggested that there might have been some sort of temporal relationship between Casas Grandes, in Chihuahua, Mexico, and such Chaco settlements as Pueblo Bonito, del Arroyo, and Chetro Ketl, in New Mexico. He recognized the obvious differences in terms of ceramics, architectonics, and historical background which marked these two entities, but still felt that there was some common time denominator. Most of his contemporaries, however, believed that the city of...
Cosmology in the New World
This project consists of articles written by members of Santa Fe Institute’s cosmology research group. Overall, the goal of this group is to understand the larger relationships between cosmology and society through a theoretically open-ended, comparative examination of the ancient American Southwest, Southeast, and Mesoamerica.
POLLEN AND MACROFLORAL ANALYSIS FOR BLUFF GREAT HOUSE, SITE 42SA22674, UTAH (2003)
Samples from five kivas (West, Central, East, Northeast, and Great) in front of the Great House at Site 42SA22674 in Bluff, Utah, were analyzed for pollen and macrofloral remains. Flotation and botanic samples also were recovered from the Great House, areas of berm/midden around the Great House, the North Wall, and the Plaza. This site has several Chacoan settlement characteristics, including a multi-storied Great House surrounded by an earthen berm/trash midden, a Great Kiva, and a...
POLLEN, MACROFLORAL, AND COPROLITE ANALYSIS OF SAMPLES FROM THE BLUFF GREAT HOUSE SITE, 42SA22674, SOUTHEAST UTAH (2004)
The Bluff Great House, site 42SA22674, is located along the San Juan River in southeast Utah. This site is a Chacoan Great House occupied during the Pueblo II (Chaco era) and Pueblo III (post-Chaco) periods. The Bluff Great House Site originally was excavated by the Universlty of Colorado's field school from 1996-1998, with on-going additional excavations. This site has several Chacoan settlement characteristics, including a multi-storied Great House surrounded by an earthen berm/trash...
Shaping Space: Built Space, Landscape, and Cosmology in Four Regions (2010)
In this article, the authors seek to understand cosmological expressions in architecture and the built landscape in Mesoamerica, Northern Mexico, the US Southwest, and the US Southeast.
The Spadefoot Toad Site: Investigations at 29SJ629 Chaco Canyon, New Mexico Vol. II (1993)
The relationship of the small houses or villages to the contemporary large towns or greathouses of the Bonito phase (A.D. 900-1150) has long provoked discussion among archeologists (e.g., Kluckhohn 1939; Vivian 1970b. 1989, 1990) and was no less intriguing to the Chaco Project staff. Although attention has generally focused on greathouses as pivotal for deciphering sociopolitical complexity during the Chacoan Phenomenon, small-house occupation and the communities in which both large and small...