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ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROJECT

Stefania Wilks

Salt Lake Community College

Anth. 2969-001 Cultural Resource Management
March 8, 2016

It discovers in the masonry a combination of science and art which can only be
referred to a higher civilization. Indeed, so beautifully diminutive and true are the

details of the structure as to cause it, at a little distance, to have all the appearance
of a magnificent piece of mosaic work.
Richard Kern, 1849 survey artist and
cartographer

A thousand years ago, Americas Southwest was a thriving corridor of

communities whose influence on one another can be seen throughout their material
culture. In Figure 2, trade and immigration patterns include settlements Arizona, Utah,
Colorado, New Mexico, and Mesoamerica. Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, a UNESCO
World Heritage site, is one such place. It is located 500 miles (8.5 hours by car) to the
southeast of Salt Lake City in the San Juan basin on the Colorado Plateau. The canyon
itself is 300 feet deep and a little more than a mile and a half wide (Strutin 1994). As far
as prehistoric discovery opportunities, Chaco Canyon is an archaeologists field school
dream. Located in a relatively unpopulated region in northwestern New Mexico, its arid,
high desert climate, its inaccessibility, and its official designation have created a
prolonged and ever-available access to prehistoric understanding. Even today Chacos
visitor center receives only a small fraction (50,000) of the visitors experienced at Mesa
Verde National Park (550,000) just three hours north (Schneider 2010) . While both
contain examples of ancient Anasazi communities, Chaco Canyon is at the end of a 20
mile unpaved road.
Discovered and recorded in 1849 by a U.S. Army expedition heading west to
undertake the first survey of Navajo Lands, Chaco has been compared to the majesty of
Greek or Roman ruins. Initial archaeological excavations were begun in 1896 by

Richard Wetherill. He started his digging around the parks premiere site, Pueblo Bonito,
the largest and grandest of great houses (Strutin 1994:12). During the four seasons of
excavation, Wetherill and a young archaeology student from the American Museum of
Natural History, George Pepper, discovered caches of pottery, armaments, tools and
effigies inlaid with turquoise and jet, baskets, beads, copper bells, conch shells, and
burial chambers (Strutin 1994:16). Unfortunately, as an untrained excavator, Wetherill
had long been suspected of antiquities collecting and commerce and the fact that he
built a trading post out of the back wall of Pueblo Bonito shortly after his arrival
necessitated his replacement. Perhaps, as a result, Chaco Canyon became one of the
Figure 4: An overview of the Chaco Canyon sites as they exist within the National park borders. Courtesy NPS.

first National Monuments designated for protection in conjunction with Roosevelts

Antiquities Act of 1906. Since then, Chaco has been explored through all of
archaeologys burgeoning processes. Processual and Post-Processual research was
conducted in the 1970s and 80s, New Archaeology posited complex political
structures, locally developed but still out of place in a gradual cultural history from
ancient Anasazi to modern Pueblo (Lekson 2006). Technological advances over the
last two decades have been used to explore cultural history such as: chocolate
importation and consumption in correlation with traditional Mesoamerican ritual vessels
(Crown 2009), parasite pathoecology in Chacoan great houses (Reinhard 2008), and
even the analyses of where maize found in Chacoan great houses was grown. (Benson
2003).
In satellite images, Chaco appears to be the center of a vast culturally-related
system. Remote sensing techniques have allowed researchers to map ancient

roadways connecting a significant network of activity (Kelly and Taylor 2011:49).

Architecture, particularly Chacos monumental great houses, is what sets it apart.
Ceramic and masonry styles, even structural changes are used as dating markers.
Chaco was occupied from A.D. 850- 1250 after which the population are believed to
have migrated to other areas in New Mexico. Modern Hopi retain a strong oral history of
kinship with the ancient peoples of Chaco. (Strutin 1994:6)
Chaco has been a wonder to archaeologists for the nontraditional, incredible
sizes of their great houses. These houses are all located/situated along the south facing
canyon, while along the north face of the canyon, many smaller, much more traditional
communities existed side by side with those across the small valley. Also interesting is
how few people seemed to actually live there. Harsh environmental conditions, then as
now, did not allow for many crops. One prominent Chaco researcher, Stephen Lekson,
proposes a theory of royalty and peasant servants to explain the obvious classism that
existed. He also suggest this may be the reason their ancestors, the Hopi, have
developed such an egalitarian communal system (Lekson 2006). I found this
interpretation of data to be the most compelling, perhaps that is because I have just
finished reading the Game of Thrones series. In any event, I plan to do a camping
research trip to Chaco Canyon over Spring Break and continue to gather more
information on the site.

References
Benson, Larry
2003 Ancient Maize from Chacoan Great Houses: Where was it grown? U.S.
Geologic Survey. Boulder, Co.
Crown, Patricia
2009 Evidence of Cocoa Use in the Prehispantic American Southwest. Proc. Natl.
Academy of Sciences, USA
Kelly, Robert L. & Thomas, David Hurst
2011 Archaeology: Down To Earth 4th Ed. Wadsworth Cengade Learning.
Belmont, California
Lekson, Stephen
2006 Lords of the Great House: Pueblo Bonito as a Palace, Places and Power in
the Americas: From Peru to the Northwest Coast. Edited by Christie, Jessica
& Sarro, Patricia. University of Texas Press.

Reinhard, Karl
2008 Parasite Pathoecology of Salmon Pueblo and other Chacoan Great Houses:
The Healthiest and Wormiest Ancestral Puebloans, University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.

Schneider, Jane
2010 New Visitor Center and Museum at Chaco Culture National Historic Park Comes
with Challenges. http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2010/09/newvisitor-center-and-museum-chaco-culture-national-historical-park-come-c
challenges6891
Strutin, Michal
1994

Chaco: A Cultural Legacy, Edited by Scott, Sandra and Foreman, Ron,

published by Western National Parks System.