Chaco Connections to Mesa Verde: An Engagement with Interregional Landscape Relationships

Summary

Ideas of spiritual landscapes and aligned site orientations are gaining traction within the Chacoan archaeological community, and stand as strong examples of intentionally constructed macro-landscapes in the prehispanic Southwest. In this poster, these landscape relationships are extended towards a better understanding of interregional relationships in the four-corners, particularly to investigate inferred and intended relationships between Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. This analysis focuses on northern Chacoan outliers like Aztec and Holmes Group as demonstrations of intermediary locations between larger, more distinct cultural regions. Site relationships are investigated through several avenues: 1) geospatial analyses, with a focus on viewsheds, road orientations, and linear alignments; 2) site specific and remotely sensed data; and 3) chronological habitation data. These data demonstrate fluctuations in the northern reaches of Chaco and southern extensions of Mesa Verde throughout the PII and PIII periods, to postulate a diachronic and landscape scale perspective of relationships in the Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20636