Tree-Ring Sourcing of Great House Timbers and the Plaza Tree of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Summary

Materials arriving in Chaco Canyon from AD 900 to 1150 came from many distant sources, and the necessary construction timbers for the great houses are no exception. Here we present tree-ring sourcing of great house construction timbers and the plaza tree of Pueblo Bonito (the "rooted tree", labeled JPB-99). To source these trees, we compared their tree-ring growth patterns to a network of millennial-length tree-ring chronologies surrounding the San Juan Basin. For JPB-99, we present new documentary evidence regarding its discovery as well as new strontium isotope ratios for the tree and a set of extant ponderosa pine trees in Chaco. Results indicate that construction timbers were primarily brought from the Chuska and Zuni Mountains. The Chuskas only supplied wood after ca. 1020 and then became more important than the Zunis through the early 1100s, coincident with other materials (e.g. stone and pottery) that have been sourced to the same areas. In testing multiple hypotheses about JPB-99, we find that it most likely was brought to Pueblo Bonito from the Chuska Mountains sometime after it died in the early 1100s. Our findings support and expand on earlier sourcing efforts indicating long-distance timber procurement for great house structures in Chaco Canyon.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage