Changes in the Temporality of the Landscape during the Chacoan Period in the American Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Chaco Canyon is the center of one of the best known archaeological cultures in North America, and its influence spread widely across the northern US Southwest between AD 850 and 1150. Because of the well-preserved road segments, shrine networks, earthworks, and petroglyph panels associated with the Chacoan culture, landscape has been an important theme in Chacoan studies. Indigenous literature addressing nature/culture refines the definition of ecology to include human-made modifications to the landscape and describe the relational identity that exists between people and place. This paper draws on the ethnology of Eastern and Western Pueblo peoples to describe a continuum of landscape temporalities in the Chacoan era. The relationship between landscape temporality and identity leads to the conclusion that dynamic changes in the landscape wrought by Chacoan expansion had far-reaching consequence for residents of the American Southwest. Using landscape modifications, they rewrote local histories and enfolded many communities within a developing Chacoan polity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36522.0