Chaco Canyon: Dispersed Settlement, Dialectical Tension, and the Rise of an Ancient Polity in the Southwest U.S.

Summary

Two dozen monumental buildings lie at the heart of Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Southwest United States. However, ancient Chaco Canyon was not a single locality but a focal point for outlier settlements spanning a region of 60,000 square miles. The canyon-outlier relationship is key to understanding the Chacoan polity. Residents of canyon and outlier settlements within a dialectical relationship gathered periodically to share resources, marriage partners, and ritual knowledge. When contradictions within this relationship reached a tipping point, a group of small-scale, dispersed farmers transformed into a centralized, hierarchical rituality where secret ceremonial knowledge legitimated elite political authority.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Cities, Large Villages, or Neither? The Conundrum of "Megasites" in Prehistory

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14343