The Final Frontier: Chaco Great Houses in the Great Sage Plain of Southwestern Colorado

Author(s): Grant Coffey; Mark Varien

Year: 2018

Summary

The expansion of the Chacoan regional system into Southwestern Colorado was relatively late compared to other areas, occurring for the most part from A.D. 1080 to 1140. This poster examines this late expansion by focusing on Chaco-style great houses located in the Great Sage Plain of southwestern Colorado. Information on these Chacoan sites has been compiled during a series of projects that began in the late 1980s and continued with 2017 fieldwork during the Community Center Reassessment Project. We present an inventory of all known great houses, assess their chronological development, document variation in their size, examine their association with other types of public architecture, and identify groups of great houses that occur in distinct clusters. We conclude by examining the connection between these sites and those in Chaco Canyon and at Aztec.

Cite this Record

The Final Frontier: Chaco Great Houses in the Great Sage Plain of Southwestern Colorado. Grant Coffey, Mark Varien. Presented at The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC. 2018 ( tDAR id: 444928)

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Spatial Coverage

min long: -123.97; min lat: 37.996 ; max long: -101.997; max lat: 46.134 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20641