Mesoamerican Precedents for Chaco Canyon Great House Architecture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Architecture is one of the most common yet least understood of archaeological remains in the US Southwest. At Chaco Canyon, New Mexico unique and monumental building forms emerged and proliferated during the 9th – 12th centuries AD and questions still remain as to their origin. Lekson identified a formal typology for Chaco Canyon’s great houses which in itself establishes that Chacoans built with intention as they reiterated specific plan types throughout a landscape—defined by its architecture—that spanned an estimated 30,000-60,000 square miles. The research presented in this paper builds on prior work and demonstrates that significant ceremonial centers in Mesoamerica likely served as models for Chacoan great house architecture, a process that continued into the Pueblo IV period. Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl at Chaco Canyon, Aztec West at Aztec Ruins National Monument and Pueblo Shé in the Galisteo Basin, NM are specifically discussed. The research presented in this paper recapitulates the Ancestral Puebloan connection to Mesoamerica since specialized knowledge would have been required to plan and construct such large and complex structures in the US Southwest and since some correlation in function would have been required due to the similar spatial organizations that the structures defined.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37676.0