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21 - Regional study: Chaco Canyon and the US Southwest

from Part II - Trans-regional and regional perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Stephen H. Lekson
Edited by
Craig Benjamin
Craig Benjamin
Affiliation:
Grand Valley State University, Michigan
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Summary

Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, with its monumental eleventh-twelfth-century CE 'Great Houses', is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the US Southwest. The Southwest is a well-known region, and a major cultural heritage theme within the United States, comprising the states of New Mexico, Arizona, and the southern portions of Colorado and Utah. 'Anasazi' is an archaeological term, anglicized from a Navajo phrase, for the ancient peoples of the Four Corners region in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl were considered separate sites; but those Great Houses and many other sites in the canyon constituted a single urban or near urban settlement. The New Archaeology of the 1970s and early 1980s favored local adaptation over diffusion, migration, and extra-regional influences. Chaco can only be understood in the context of its world history: a frontier society on the edge of, but significantly connected to, Mesoamerica, reflecting the history of Mesoamerica's civilizations.

Keywords

MinoansMediterranean cultureHellenistic periodEastern MediterraneanWestern Roman EmpireRoman RepublicMycenaeans
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 572 - 602
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further Reading

Cameron, Catherine M. (ed.), Chaco and after in the Northern San Juan: Excavations at the Bluff Great House, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Cameron, Catherine M. (ed.), “Organization of Production at Chaco Canyon” (special issue), American Antiquity 66/1 (2001): 5–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cordell, Linda S., Judge, W. James, and Piper, June-el (eds.), Chaco Society and Polity: Papers from the 1999 Conference, Albuquerque: New Mexico Archaeological Council, 2001.Google Scholar
Doyel, David E. (ed.), Anasazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System, Anthropological Papers 5, Albuquerque: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 1992.Google Scholar
Frazier, Kendrick, People of Chaco: A Canyon and Its Culture, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.Google Scholar
Hayes, Alden C., Brugge, David M., and Judge, W. James (eds.), Archaeological Surveys of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Publications in Archaeology 18A, Washington, dc: National Park Service, 1981.Google Scholar
Judd, Neil M., The Architecture of Pueblo Bonito, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 147, Washington, dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1964.Google Scholar
Judd, Neil M., The Material Culture of Pueblo Bonito, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 124, Washington, dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1954.Google Scholar
Judd, Neil M., Pueblo del Arroyo, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 138, Washington, dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1959.Google Scholar
Kantner, John W. (ed.), “The Chaco World,” Kiva 69 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kantner, John W., and M. Mahoney, Nancy (eds.), Great House Communities across the Chacoan Landscape, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000, pp. 19–27.Google Scholar
Lekson, Stephen H., The Chaco Meridian: Centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest, Walnut Creek, ca: AltaMira Press, 1999.Google Scholar
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Wills, W. H., “Political Leadership and the Construction of Chaco Great Houses,” in Mills, Barbara J. (ed.), Alternative Leadership Strategies in the Prehispanic Southwest, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000, pp. 19–44.Google Scholar
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