Misunderstanding The Prehistoric Southwest: What Happened At Chaco?

AScribe ^ | 2-17-2003

[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.

[blam]

Work done by Christy Turner (ASU) indicates that cannibalism was present at Chaco.

[NativeSon]

Work done by Christy Turner (ASU) indicates that cannibalism was present at Chaco

I've heard that thrown around but never any real evidence.

I wish these people would find something better to do than dig up my ancestors...

[Publius]

There was a show about this on the Discovery Channel. The presence of chemicals unique to human meat was found in coprolites -- fossilized dung -- taken from Chaco.

[mewzilla]

Maybe CJD did them in.

[NativeSon]

They attempt to draw questionbable conclusions with any data found.

I have issues with archeologists/anthropologists our religion is only myth and legend, not respected and our dead are dug up in the name science.

[justshutupandtakeit]

How do you know whose dead are being dug up? Or that "your" people were there in days long gone?

[petitfour]

There's no water there! What do people do when there's no water? Leave? Eat each other? How long are folks going to study this? Must've been that darn ozone hole created by Republicans that caused all the water to dry up.

[Bernard Marx]

Saw that. I thought it was odd that the team reprised all of Turner's evidence but he wasn't mentioned in the part I saw -- I missed part of the beginning. To me it looked as if they were trying to take credit for his work.

[bert]

I visited the Bluff site in September. It is mostly a mound with little to see except some depressions marking kivas.There is a depression to the north marking an acient roadway as well.

one evening, a local archeologist pointed out to me a bright circular spot on the mesa overlooking Bluff that suddenly disappeared. The setting sun shines through a hole and eventually marks the atumnal equinox on the mesa wall. Very cool.

I camped one night in Chaco..... the coyotes howled all night. Chaco is awsome.

If you do a search on the Chaco meridian and leckson you find a guy who claims to have discovered it and then proceeds to declare it is just a chance occurance. These guys love to have war with words

[blam]

"There was a show about this on the Discovery Channel. The presence of chemicals unique to human meat was found in coprolites -- fossilized dung -- taken from Chaco."

Yup, that was Christy Turner's 'slam-dunk.' (It was more like 'mummified' dung.)

[blam]

"Turner, Christy G. 1993. Cannabalism in Chaco Canyon: The charnel pit excavated in 1926 at Small House Ruin by Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 91: 421-439."

"Turner, Christy G., and Jacqueline A. Turner. 1990. Perimortem damage to human skeletal remains from Wupatki National Monument, northern Arizona. Kiva 55(3): 187-212."

[blam]

There aren't any American Indian/Native American skeletons in North America that are older than 6,000 years old, James C. Chatters, Ancient Encounters. Previous to that, they are the Kennewick Man variety, Ainu/Jomon.

[Question_Assumptions]

The evidence is substantial and the conclusions are hardly based on only one or two finds. If you want a more generic treatment on the subject of prehistoric behavior that doesn't single any one people out, take a look at Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization. In short, the evidence of prehistoric warfare, cannibalism, and other nastiness is quite common but it often gets rejected by researchers who prefer the "peaceful savage" myth.

[PJ-Comix]

Work done by Christy Turner (ASU) indicates that cannibalism was present at Chaco.

Today's Lunch Special at the Chaco Inn Restaurant: Chili Con Barney.

[blam]

Ping.

[NativeSon]

How do you know whose dead are being dug up? Or that "your" people were there in days long gone?

Many of the "sites" that these people dig in are sacred, the scavengers come and plunder. The Kiva societies are alive and well today. Just because people see this as "days long gone" does not mean that it has no meaning.

And when I say "my people" I mean A.I.'s collectively - I am not of the Peacefull People (Kiva Societies)- but we are all equally plagued by the grave robbers.

They should leave these things alone, it is not good to disturb the past.

[NativeSon]

There aren't any American Indian/Native American skeletons in North America that are older than 6,000 years old, James C. Chatters, Ancient Encounters. Previous to that, they are the Kennewick Man variety, Ainu/Jomon.

So, just because remains can not be found, they didn't exist? If evidence like that is needed for you then I guess you have no Gods?

Methinks "Pre-historic" history is more complex than people imagine. I do NOT know the answere but my Religion guides my and explains how we got here and that is good enough for me.

[NativeSon]

The evidence is substantial and the conclusions are hardly based on only one or two finds. If you want a more generic treatment on the subject of prehistoric behavior that doesn't single any one people out, take a look at Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization. In short, the evidence of prehistoric warfare, cannibalism, and other nastiness is quite common but it often gets rejected by researchers who prefer the "peaceful savage" myth.

And Aliens built the Mayan Temples...

I know what science says about the past, I know that their ideas of "civilization" leaves a lot to be desired.

I do not object to all the claims, I object to the ransacking of sacred lands and devices.

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 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.

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).

[Miss Marple]

You raise an interesting point. I should point out to you, though, that archaeologists do not confine their grave-digging to prehistoric American kiva societies...but also dig up Vikings, Celts, ancient Romans, etc. The difference is that while Europeans see skeletal remains as scientific evidence (the soul having long since departed), you see them as sacred. I think this is a cultural difference between archaeologists and Native Americans, and not something in which certain groups are singled out for grave-robbing.