Ch.4: Chacoan Architecture

URBAN GENESIS AT CHACO: Case Study of the Origin of Civilizations. Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6

4.1 Chacoan Architecture

Chacoan design changed at all scales simultaneously. Therefore this chapter is divided into three sections, analyzing sequential change at different scales. Part 4.2 is an overview of canyon-wide development. Part 4.3 describes the emergence and evolution of great-houses. Chapter 5 is an examination of the regional system, outliers, and celestial alignments.

The Chaco culture is best known for its Great-houses, especially Pueblo Bonito and Aztec Ruin. These complex, rambling buildings typically cover more than an acre and include plazas and terraced blocks with hundreds of rooms, including what seem to be huge kivas. These buildings evolved out of domestic architecture to become a new public building type, apparently to serve the needs of a rapidly-changing society.

Chacoan great-houses have been studied for more than a century, well-known to archaeologists and tourists alike. What has only recently been discovered is the extent of the Chacoan regional system. As the Chaco Culture consolidated into a regional entity, designers began to conceive of space, form, and sequence at the scale of the entire San Juan Basin. Large-scale design was probably used to reinforce the idea of a new state by establishing Chaco as the Center of Centers, or as Wheatley (1969) puts it, the 'Pivot of the Four Quarters'.

Figure 4.1. The Pueblo Cultural Region, Circa ad 900
(after Cordell 1984, Ortiz 1979) Tenth-century inhabitants of the region shared a common material culture. Subsistence strategies, portable artifacts, and dwellings--in the form of the unit pueblo--varied little from region to region. Scores of villages had also formed, and the population of the region seems to have been increasing (Cordell 1984). Several communities existed in and near Chaco Canyon at this time, and it is in these communities that three great-houses were first built in the beginning of the tenth century.

CHAPTER 4 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Crown, Patricia L. and W. James Judge. Chaco and Hohokam: Prehistoric Regional Systems in the American Southwest (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1991).

Cordell, Linda S. Prehistory of the Southwest (Academic Press, 1984).

Judd, Neil M. "The Architecture of Pueblo Bonito." Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, v.147, no.1 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1964).

Kincaid, Chris ed. Chaco Roads Project, Phase I: A Reappraisal of Prehistoric Roads in the San Juan Basin (Albuquerque: New Mexico Office of the Bureau of Land Management, 1983).

Lekson, Stephen. Great Pueblo Architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).

Lekson, Stephen H.; Windes, Thomas C.; Stein, John R.; Judge, W. James. "The Chaco Canyon Community." Scientific American vol.259, no.1 (July, 1988):100.

Marshall, Anne L. "The Location of Great Houses at Chaco Canyon" (Berkeley: unpublished Masters Thesis in the Department of Architecture, 1989).

Marshall, Michael P. "The Chacoan Roads--A Cosmological Interpretation." in Morrow, Mesa Verde Symposium Proceedings, 1991.

Mindeleff, Victor and Cosmos. A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibloa (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1891).

Morrow, Baker H. and V.B. Price. Proceedings of the Mesa Verde Symposium on Anasazi Architecture and American Design. (Mesa Verde: manuscript, 1992) [Note: Papers are listed separately in the bibliography also]

Rohn, Arthur H. "Pueblo Architectural Layout as a Reflection of Social Organization" in Morrow, Mesa Verde Symposium Proceedings, 1991.

Sebastian, Lynne. The Chaco Anasazi: Sociopolitical evolution in the Prehsitoric Southwest (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Sofaer, Anna. "Unique Solar Marking Construct" Science October 16, 1979.

Stein, John R. and Stephen Lekson. "Anasazi Ritual Landscapes." paper presented at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archaeology, April 1990.

Stein, John R., Suiter, Judith E., and Ford, Dabney. "High Noon in Old Bonito: Sun, Shadow, and the Geometry of the Chaco Complex." in Morrow, Mesa Verde Symposium Proceedings, 1991.

Vivian, R. Gwinn. The Chacoan Prehistory of the San Juan Basin (San Diego: Academic Press, 1990).