A Closer Look at the Big Picture: Great House Community Dynamics at Aztec Ruins National Monument, Northwest New Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Three Chacoan great houses (Aztec North, West, and East) comprise the focal point of the Ancestral Pueblo community at Aztec Ruins National Monument in the Animas Valley of northwestern New Mexico. The well-known occupational histories of Aztec West and East, established through decades of tree-ring dating, includes over 4000 tree ring dates taken from structural timbers. Aztec North and the associated community of habitation sites contained within the monument are less well known, but integral to the establishment of the great house settlement. With completion of an archaeological inventory for all property within the monument boundary, the story of the Aztec great houses and the people who built these grand structures has expanded. Utilizing several analytical tools, such as ceramic mean dating, tree ring dating, architectural attributes, and GIS resulting from the inventory and past excavation projects, we propose a settlement history for the Aztec great houses and community. Our goal in this presentation is to offer a cohesive story of a great house community with its local founding during the late A.D. 1000s, Chacoan heyday in the early A.D. 1100s, revitalization movement in the post-Chaco era, and final migration and depopulation by A.D. 1290.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32862