Posted on 02/18/2003 12:51:48 PM PST by blam
Mon Feb 17 13:32:03 2003 Pacific Time
Misunderstanding the Prehistoric Southwest: What Happened at Chaco?
BOULDER, Feb. 17 (AScribe Newswire) -- Two University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have developed intriguing theories on the mysterious demise of the Chaco Canyon Pueblo people and the larger Chaco region that governed an area in the Southwest about the size of Ohio before it collapsed about 1125.
Steve Lekson, curator of anthropology at the CU Museum, believes a powerful political system centered at Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico may have kept other Pueblo peoples under its thumb from about 1000 to 1125. As the capital city of a huge region, Chaco became a place to store and exchange commodities, and the elite rulers probably exacted goods and taxes from outlying Chacoan villagers.
Chaco was the first stable settlement in the Southwest, sporting a dozen huge, multistoried sandstone buildings known as "great houses" that surrounded a plaza. It appears that a hundred or so elite people lived in each great house, with another 1,000 or so people living in single-family kivas outside the city center.
Lekson refers to Chaco as "the 800-pound gorilla of Anasazi archaeology" and possibly the major player in Pueblo prehistory. "It was an elite community living in a showy, ceremonial city that ruled a region containing tens of thousands of people."
Roughly 150 Chaco "outliers" up to hundreds of miles distant - including Colorado's famed Mesa Verde - show Chaco's influence, including the construction of multi-storied great houses. One, a site adjacent to the town of Bluff, Utah, that has been studied by Lekson, CU-Boulder anthropology Associate Professor Catherine Cameron and CU students, is one of the farthest northeast "outliers" to Chaco.
"Things started to happen in Chaco in the 9th century," said Lekson. "At that time, small settlements outside the canyon were fighting with each other. With the rise of Chaco, that raiding and feuding ended."
A paper on the subject by Lekson and Cameron was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Denver Feb. 13 to Feb. 18.
Lekson believes the collapse of Chaco may have begun with a spiritual tug-of-war between the Chaco elite and their followers and a second group lured south by new religious and spiritual beliefs springing up without an oppressive government. Chaco Canyon was always arid, and a drought likely sent the elite and their followers north to Aztec, located on the Animas River.
"I think there may have been some serious policing with 'goon squads' in the Chacoan region about the time the Chaco Empire was collapsing, and some serious slicing and dicing began as local warfare broke out," said Lekson.
"Toward the end, there may have been policing in the Chacoan region in an attempt to maintain order. But when Chaco was collapsing, some serious violence and warfare broke out," he said. "Chaco could no longer control its region."
The Chaco elite ordered the building of a wide path known today as the Great North Road due north about 60 miles to the Aztec Pueblo, a minor blip on the region's radar screen in the Southwest at the time but one that turned into a second major capital beginning about 1110 and lasting until 1275, he said.
A great drought about that time likely caused the center at Aztec to pull up stakes, reverse cosmological direction and make a beeline directly south. While thousands of Aztec people joined western and eastern pueblos, thousands more led by the ruling elite marched nearly 450 miles straight south to build an even bigger city at Paquime in present day Chihuahua, Mexico, that lasted until about 1450.
Lekson calculated Aztec, Chaco and Paquime are off a north-south meridian by only about three miles, explainable by the terrain and technology, which likely included "line-of-sight" travel and stellar navigation, he said. Similar architectural features at all three cities that are found nowhere else bolster Lekson's novel theory, which he calls the "Chaco Meridian."
Continuing research by Professor Cameron and CU students at the Bluff great house in Utah indicates the great house was occupied after the crash of the Chacoan empire and the berms surrounding it were built during the Aztec heydays. "It was an eye-opener because it indicates the berms were built long after Chaco collapsed," Cameron said.
The Bluff people may have "experienced a religious revival," perhaps tied to the growing influence of the Aztec culture centered near present-day Aztec, N.M." she said.
Please, spare me the straw man. Have you actually read any of the books on the subject such as Steven Leblanc's Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest? Or are you simply assuming that any analysis that seeks to demonstrates cannibalism or other nastiness must be wrong because you've already decided that your ancestors could never have done such a thing?
I know what science says about the past, I know that their ideas of "civilization" leaves a lot to be desired.
In what way? Because you think they are "Eurocentric"?
Keeley's book deals with sites all over the globe. Indeed, the most striking anecdote about how political correctness has invaded archeology in the intro to his book is about sites in Europe and how any wall around a settlement must be called an "enclosure" and not a "fortification" (even if the "enclosure" is littered with arrow heads in a clear attack pattern) because the conventional "wisdom" is that there was no warfare in prehistoric Europe and thus no need for "fortifications". Later he describes how American archaeologists always discuss Southwestern American ruins as "defensive" and all of the people as "peaceful" without ever asking the obvious question that if everyone was so peaceful, who were they all defending against?
I do not object to all the claims, I object to the ransacking of sacred lands and devices.
I don't think they've been "ransacking" for a while. If you consider disturbing any burial, even respectfully as "ransacking", then I'll have to disagree with you and I'll note that Archaeologists disturb the burial grounds of all peoples and cultures including those of dead white males (see recent excavations at Jamesburg for a good example). Archaeologists often learn the most from burials and to place them entirely off limits is to say that we no longer have any interest in learning about the past. And to claim that any burial in a region belongs to a group even if that group is known to have entered the region long after the burial seems more designed to prevent study than to respect the dead.
I am not one to subscribe to the "peaceful savage" ideal, some peoples definitely were into cannibalism (and not in a Royal Navy way), there are rites and rituals that involve the flesh and parts of humans- these are taboo and evil.
I'm not talking about rights and rituals. I'm talking about killing people, ransacking their home, butchering them like animals, and treating their remains with the same disrespect shown to animal remains. Have you actually read any accounts of the finds? A good summary can be found here. Leaving the bones on the floor and crapping in the fire are not signs of any rite or ritual I can imagine. Might this have been part of a short period of madness? Sure. Could this have been a particularly evil band of people who were not representative of most of the people in that area at the time? Sure. Does any of this mean anything about the current residents of the area who are descendents of these people? Of course not.
I must admit that I get too defensive with this subject. The "ologists" treat us as dead things to be studied and preserved. I don't like that.
They do that to everyone's ancestors, not just yours. You'll notice that they are studying the burials of Jamestown settlers and the bones of those found in the Minitor and Hunley, too. I'll grant you that scientists in the past were particularly insensitive to Native American concerns and weren't showing any respect to remains at one point. But that is no reason to reject all study. And simply because negative stereotypes have been applied in the past in a racist way does not mean that every negative find is simply an attack by a racist researcher.
oh and speaking of cannibalism and other nastiness I know of another religion that celebrates the consumption of human flesh and blood and the brutal murder of it followers (martyrs).
You'll notice that (A) the celebration you are talking about has always been symbolic, not literal and (B) that the people remembering the martyrs weren't the people who murdered them. Frankly, I think it would be silly for you to argue that the cannibalism being found in the American Southwest was a normal part of their religion, like communion is to Christianity. I think you'd be better of thinking of it as a momentary madness by bad people, much more like what the Inquisition or the sacking of Constantinople was for Christianity.
I won't go into how I view remains but you mention the Vikings, Celts and Romans- how many people are Viking, Celt or Roman? I don't mean decendents I mean of those, still here and praticing the same religion, tongue, etc. .
My Nation is alive and well and must deal with these grave robbers today. I know the peoples of Chaco may be unknown but this goes on in other tribes as well.
I have not read this book since you find it very interesting, I will acquire ASAP.
Let me just say that I enjoy my life and would not want to live "in the good old days". To not recognize the great achievements of the Euros would be foolish and dishonest.
I also know that terms peaceful and warrior did not go together well.
I was not trying to draw a line between Christianity and cannibalism I was trying to annoy. We all know that in the past things were brutal, I do not argue or defend that. It is just that this type of "find" is often used as justification to do more digging- literally.
I am born of the Dine' (I'm skipping the Clans here). Your uncle recognized a grave robber when he saw one.
You know the old addage about the Reservation: for each Indian there are 2 anthropoligist and 4 Government Indian Agents.
That's too funny, you only hear this from Indians. Thinking about this a little more makes me wonder if its not the difference in how we (as peoples) perceive time and our relationship to the world (not in a corny hippie way)?
I am not an expert on this, and I simply wanted to point out that I don't believe people are singling your group out particularly, although I grant that if it were MY ancestors' cemetery being studied, I might have a less dispassionate view of the whole thing. So I guess you have made a good point.
I have a question: do they keep skeletal remains permanently, or simply study them and then rebury them? I think most information could be gained photographically and with X-rays, and then return the body to its burial site. (What am I thinking...there are Egyptian mummies in almost every large museum in the country. Nevermind.)
Yes, how I view/hold the dead and the past, etc. is quite different. The subject of Chaco being left alone is very import to the Dine'.
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Seems a lot of the hitherto “ancient peoples” were into cannibalism. And why should the Americas be different from island nations? Or head-hunting tribes on other continents?
It wasn’t “America” until white men came here. (Think about it...[as Benny Hill would have said]...)
So basically there government got too big and powerful. The leaders in the government tied to take the wealth for themselves and this destroyed the society. Where have I seem this lately? Hmmm...
I’ll take the resurrection of this thread as a propitious sign
Yesterday we took down the map of our last years Texas wanderings and put up the map of the recent trip to the Gulf Coast and the Indian Country Map. The Indian Country map will allow planning for our trip next September ‘11. Right now it has only two pins..... Chaco and Canyon de Chelly
Also, I think that by now there are new Steve Lekson books expanding on his work The Chaco Meridian.
Long pig - the other white meat.
No surprise, actually, when one has studied the ancient cultures of the Americas.
Thanks for posting the pics. :o]
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