October 5, 1997
Anasazi's Master Builders
By James Abarr
Of the Journal
In the stark and lonely high desert of southeast San Juan County, a shallow slash in the tawny-colored earth breaks the monotony of the desolate terrain.
At first glance, it looks like a typical desert canyon — devoid of trees, short on water, bottomlands laced with saltbush and shrub grasses and lined by fractured cliffs of yellow sandstone.
It seems an unlikely place for human life to take root and prosper, but more than 1,000 years ago, this lonely place was a great center of prehistoric Indian culture that reached an amazing level of achievement.
Today, stunning stone ruins of ancient Indian towns, crafted by master builders, extend for 20 miles along the floor of the narrow rift, cut by a once-sizeable stream.
It's a place of awe, mystery and delight — one of the archaeological wonders of North America and now preserved as Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
Since 1896, when the first major excavations and study of Chaco Canyon were undertaken, many archaeological teams and individuals have labored to excavate and interpret the ruins and define the contributions of the Anasazi culture.
They include Richard Wetherill, who lived in Chaco Canyon in the early 1900s; Neil M. Judd and Gordon Vivian of the National Park Service; Dr. Edgar L. Hewitt, an archaeologist who served as the first president of Highlands University from 1898-1903; the National Geographic Society; the Peabody Museum of Harvard University; the University of New Mexico and the School of American Research in Santa Fe.
Using backhoes, shovels, picks, wiskbrooms, infrared sensing and laboratory analysis, scientists from a host of disciplines — archaeology, ethnology, paleoecology, history, biology, chemistry and others — labored through decades to piece together this intriguing story of Chaco Canyon.
Greener times
As early as 6,000 B.C., nomadic hunters roamed the canyon in search of deer, elk, bison and antelope.
Evidence suggests that at the time, Chaco was a greener place, more lush with timber and grasses, and blessed with sufficient water from a stream that today, except in periods of heavy rain, is a trickle at best.
By about 3,600 B.C., in the same millennium that the great pyramids were being built in the Nile Valley of Egypt, the hunters and gatherers of Chaco had exchanged their wandering ways for a more-sedentary lifestyle. The first pithouse settlements appeared, and crops of corn and squash were cultivated in the canyon bottom.
Over succeeding centuries, life evolved slowly as pithouses gave way to small, one-story surface dwellings, farming was introduced, baskets and pottery appeared and the population grew as more nomadic clans settled in the Chaco area.
Then, in about 850 A.D., the Anasazi — or the Ancient Ones, as the Navajos call them — began what archaeologists term the Chaco Phenomenon, the abrupt flowering of a civilization that vanished as readily as it had bloomed.
Over the next 200 years, Chaco Canyon was transformed from a community of scattered pithouses and crude surface dwellings into a complex of sophisticated and elaborate stone pueblos. Some were constructed in the shape of circles, some in half-circles, and some in the shape of the letter "E," but all give evidence of being carefully planned and laid out by architects and builders of amazing skill.
Building boom
Over time, a few of the "Great Houses," as archaeologists call them, grew to four stories with hundreds of rooms. Their carefully crafted walls of core-and-veneer masonry required millions of shaped pieces of sandstone, while thousands of timbers went into ceilings and roofbeams. Aligned doorways linked the many rooms.
Dr. Gregory Schaaf, a scholar in Indian history, wrote: "The architectural engineering and artistic skills of these prehistoric builders is enhanced by the realization that they worked without metal tools or precision instruments."
By the mid-11th century, or at about the same time that Duke William of Normandy conquered England in 1066, and more than four centuries before Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World, the Anasazi had erected a dozen pueblos in Chaco Canyon.
In the surrounding area, extending in a great circle around Chaco, 75 smaller towns and hundreds of settlements were inhabited. These were linked to the canyon pueblos by a 250-mile-long network of roads.
In the canyon bottomlands and surrounding areas, crops were raised in fields watered by a well-engineered irrigation system of reservoirs, canals, ditches and diversion walls that channeled water from rains and the swift-flowing river that nourished life in now-dry Chaco.
Even so, the fickleness of weather at the canyon's elevation of 6,000 feet made farming a chancy undertaking. As archaeologists Robert and Florence Lister noted, one year could be wet with abundant rain; the next could be bone-dry. One growing season could be long; the next one short.
To boost their economy, Anasazi craftsmen processed turquoise brought from distant mines into exquisite necklaces, bracelets and pendants, and Chaco became the hub of a vast trading network extending over a wide area. By 1050 A.D., the canyon communities formed the economic, cultural and spiritual center of the San Juan Basin.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the Chaco Anasazi were not warriors. They were peaceful builders and engineers, hunters, artisans and tillers of the soil. Excavations of the ruins have produced a wealth of stone tools such as hoes, trowels, hammers, axes, wedges and knives, but few weapons. Although these people undoubtedly had weapons for hunting, arrow points or spearheads have rarely been found, the Listers say.
Social structures
As the population of Chaco grew to perhaps 6,000 people, a complex social and religious structure evolved.
Acutely aware of their dependence on the powers of nature, the Ancient Ones, through a host of elaborate rituals in the sacred kivas, sought divine help. Each clan had its own kiva, but there also were elaborate kivas of great size for community rituals, National Park Service archaeologists say.
As a result, hundreds of these subterranean circular chambers, some 50 and 60 feet in diameter, dotted the great pueblos and the smaller sites.
As historian David Lavender wrote: "Mostly, the kiva was the domain of men, but women could enter to bring food, observe ceremonies or socialize. ... They were essentially religious in purpose and a place which provided an approach for the kachinas, the spirits of the earth. They also contained the sipapu, the symbolic hole that represented the people's place of emergence into the upper world."
Archaeological evidence indicates that the complex Chaco society featured a clear division of specialists. There were town officials and religious leaders, craftsmen, stonecutters, builders, merchants, farmers, hunters and laborers.
Other evidence of this well-organized culture is found in a network of elevated structures believed to have served as line-of-sight signal stations linking the Chaco towns.
There also was a celestial calendar. Notches carved in certain portals and unique corner windows in the "Great Houses" appear to have been a system for observations of the sun, moon and stars to mark the change of seasons and thus the proper times for planting, harvesting and religious ceremonies.
Disintegration
Then, after three centuries of growth of this remarkable society, it began to dissolve. A slow but steady decline set in to mark the second phase of the Chaco Phenomenon.
A number of factors contributed to the demise, but the crowning blow was probably an extended drought throughout the San Juan Basin from about A.D. 1130 to 1190. This sustained lack of moisture had dire consequences for Chaco's social fabric, which eroded under the pressure of continual food shortages.
As the Listers wrote: "Nor was it just the lack of rain or snow which caused the fields to become sterile. Continuous irrigation over many centuries, without any form of soil enrichment, caused the land to choke with alkali.
"In addition, as timber resources were depleted and the forest withdrew, so did many kinds of plant and animal life basic to the economy of the people. ...
"Then, social malaise and lack of confidence in those in authority added to the insoluble problem of subsisting in such a parched area, brought disintegration of the group."
Gradually, the people drifted away to begin new lives in more fertile areas. Some went north into Colorado, some traveled to Arizona and Utah, and others ventured into west-central New Mexico, the Mount Taylor area around Grants and the Middle Rio Grande Valley. Today, many of New Mexico's Pueblo people trace their ancestry to the Anasazi.
By the early 1200s, the great stone cities lay deserted.
Joe Sando, director of Pueblo Studies at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, doesn't agree with some interpretations of the Chaco Culture.
"Generally, the excavations and studies of the canyon probably have been done as well as possible," he said, "but there is too much emphasis on the Navajos. The Chaco people are the ancestors of the people of Acoma, Jemez and the Rio Grande pueblos. Navajos became linked to the people of Chaco through marriage with Pueblos."
Sando, a member of the Jemez Pueblo, said Pueblo people believe the spirits of their ancestors still live in Chaco.
"When Pueblo people visit there, they spread corn meal on the ground, and in this way, they feed the spirits."
Grand monument
Today, 800 years after abandonment, the pueblos of the Chaco Anasazi are magnificent even in ruins. Since 1916, they have been under the protection of the National Park Service, which works to preserve and interpret them.
In 1987, Chaco Canyon was designated a World Heritage Site, an archaeological classification that recognizes the area as one of global cultural significance.
A 12-mile-long circular road, starting at the park Visitor Center, provides easy access to a number of the major pueblos with their mixture of Navajo and Spanish names. Other ancient settlements are reached via back-country hiking trails.
Best known and largest of the major sites is massive Pueblo Bonito (Beautiful Town), built under the cliffs of the canyon's north wall. The Navajos call it Sa-bah-ohn-nee, the Place Where the Rocks Are Propped Up.
Tree-ring datings indicate that construction of this D-shaped town began in about A.D. 850 with a single story of rooms around a central plaza. Over the next 200 years, it grew in stages to become one of the largest pueblos built in the Southwest.
By about 1050, Pueblo Bonito was probably four stories high in places. It spread across more than three acres of ground and contained 650 rooms and 32 kivas. It measures 667 feet across its straight front wall, while the circular rear wall is more than 800 feet long.
It is estimated that 60 million pieces of hand-trimmed and carefully fitted sandstone went into Pueblo Bonito's walls of core-and veneer masonry, a construction technique that is a hallmark of "Great House" construction. This employs a core of roughly shaped pieces of stone laid in mud mortar, which is then faced with carefully selected and shaped stones to create the veneer. When the walls were completed and roofed, a plaster coating was applied.
That many of these walls still stand is mute testimony to the soundness of their construction and to the skill of their builders.
These "Great Houses" also required thousands of feet of timber, some brought from mountains 25 miles away. In one section of Pueblo Bonito's lower tier of rooms, original roof beams have been preserved by the dry desert climate.
S.P. Holsinger, a federal land official who visited the area in 1901, called Pueblo Bonito the "ruin of ruins, the equal of which, in magnitude and general interest, is not to be found among the world's collection of discovered prehistoric sites."
Four hundred yards east of Pueblo Bonito is Chetro Ketl, an unusual E-shaped complex of 500 rooms and a dozen kivas that dates to the late ninth century. Its rear wall is nearly 1,000 feet long.
The hundreds of rooms in the "Great Houses" indicate that they were home for many people, but some archaeologists theorize that because of their size, these giant pueblos might have served a community function rather than individual family needs.
Another of Chaco's stellar attractions is the great kiva of Casa Rinconada, which crowns the top of a small rise on the south side of the canyon opposite Pueblo Bonito.
This is the largest kiva found in Chaco Canyon. It is 63 feet in diameter, and as with other great kivas, it features an encircling masonry bench, antechambers, a raised firebox, floor vaults and uniform wall niches, which probably provided storage for religious and ceremonial objects.
Seating pits housed upright timbers that once supported a massive roof. When these pits were excavated at Casa Rinconada, one of them still contained a portion of a timber almost 2 feet in diameter.
As the Listers wrote in their detailed study, "The Archaeology and Archaeologists of Chaco Canyon":
"When Navajos moved into the Chaco region, probably in the early 1700s, they herded their stock and built their hogans in a country dotted with remains of their predecessors. ...
"Although struck with wonderment at the abundance and magnitude of the Anasazi vestiges, they generally avoided them out of respect for anything associated with the dead. It remained ... for three generations of archaeologists to decipher their secrets."
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