Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Gran Chichimeca, Volume 2, Medio Period

Author(s): Charles C. Di Peso

Editor(s): Gloria J. Fenner; Alice Wesche

Year: 1974

Summary

It is believed that sometime around the year A.D. 1060 a group of sophisticated Mesoamerican merchants came into the valley of the Casas Grandes and inspired the indigenous Chichimecans to build the city of Paquime over portions of an older Viejo Period village. These foreign donors may have been drawn here by specific information supplied to them by their family-affiliated spying vanguards, who perhaps lived with the frontiersmen during the last phase of the Viejo Period. These organizers who may have come from somewhere along the Pacific coast of Mexico brought with them an aggregate of technological knowledge such as one might associate with an advanced hydraulic society.

Specifically, these aliens should not be thought of as coming to the frontier as a flood of immigrants- men, women, and children carrying their personal belongings over hill and dale- but rather as few professionals who came either in flight from their homeland, by Chichimecan invitation, or perhaps as military conquerors motivated by a calculated business venture. In any event, they brought with them a certain expertise and soon assumed, by one method or another, the role of co-leaders or teachers.

Cite this Record

Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Gran Chichimeca, Volume 2, Medio Period, 2. Charles C. Di Peso, Gloria J. Fenner, Alice Wesche. The Amerind Foundation, Inc. ,9. Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press. 1974 ( tDAR id: 459162) ; doi:10.48512/XCV8459162

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Keywords

Culture
Hohokam

Material
Ceramic • Ground Stone • Human Remains

Site Name
Casas Grandes

Site Type
Archaeological Feature • Artifact Scatter • Burial Pit • Commercial or Industrial Structures • Domestic Structure or Architectural Complex • Domestic Structures • Funerary and Burial Structures or Features • Hearth • House • Midden • Platform Mound • Post Hole / Post Mold • Rock Alignment • Rock Shelter • Settlements • Town / City

Investigation Types
Archaeological Overview • Architectural Documentation • Architectural Survey • Collections Research • Data Recovery / Excavation • Ethnographic Research • Heritage Management • Methodology, Theory, or Synthesis • Site Evaluation / Testing

Spatial Coverage

min long: -113.774; min lat: 24.798 ; max long: -100.767; max lat: 36.13 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Amerind Museum

Principal Investigator(s): Charles C. Di Peso

Prepared By(s): The Amerind Foundation, Inc.

Record Identifiers

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number(s): 74-82018

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Contact(s): Amerind Museum

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