Mystery of Chaco
Mystery of Chaco
My companions today are an archaeologist and an art historian, both close friends. We all three majored in anthropology, fifty years ago, but only one of us turned professional. That’s Dave, our guide, who with extreme graciousness has driven us out this long, rough road to Chaco Canyon. Sydney is the other rider, tall, blonde, beautiful, and as gracious as anyone ever was. She and I are deeply curious about the mind-boggling mystery of our destination, the most monumental and significant archaeological site in North America. We’re privileged and grateful to be going with someone who knows the place and the current state of research about it.
A tidy understanding of what happened at Chaco would be satisfying, but one hasn’t appeared in over 100 years of research. The huge scope and scale of the mystery make it an eternal, shape-shifting conundrum. Informed guesses seem the best anyone, even experts, can do, and those have varied dramatically as new discoveries, such as the astronomical alignments of the great house buildings, have come to light.
Grand interpretations have evolved from Chaco Culture being an extension of Aztec society, to a large residential complex with high tech agriculture, to a center of trade and commerce, to a large-scale ceremonial center, led by a powerful priesthood with extensive and penetrating knowledge of the heavens. But the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, and is likely to remain there forever.
Three days before the trip, Dave whetted our appetites with an impromptu seminar around my kitchen table during a time out from an errand that brought him up from Albuquerque. He has some deeply considered views on what happened, though those too must remain speculative. He slips easily into the professorial role, and Sydney and I are both natural born students (though she’s a better one than I). She thoughtfully considers evidence, making mental notes, while I’m grasping impatiently toward some quick and dirty explanation. I have some tentative notions based on viewing Anna Sofaer’s documentary, The Mystery of Chaco Canyon, which details her extensive findings about astronomical alignments in Chaco Culture. It also features Pueblo anthropologists intimating corruption of priestly power in latter stages of the culture that ultimately led to rejection of the ways of the elite and the slow, systematic abandonment of the great ruins of Chaco Canyon.
That struck me as a very intriguing and plausible deepening, and darkening, of the mystery, so much so that it’s hard for me to see the large story otherwise. My take on this is surely an example of what Dave calls cherry-picking – i.e., forming a hypothesis, then selectively choosing facts that support it. Yes, guilty, but he also accuses leading scholars of the same thing, so at least I’m in good company. Despite his superior knowledge, I’m skeptical of Dave’s contrary view, which conjectures an almost completely voluntary workforce constructing all of these great houses, each of which required hundreds of thousands of man-hours to build. Given the amount and difficulty of the labor, I have to wonder about that.
We come away from the kitchen-table seminar understanding a few basic pieces that must fit into the puzzle. These include: (1) the massive masonry great house structures, five stories high, and the network of roads spread over a very large area were intricately and consistently aligned with solstice and equinox positions of sun and moon; (2) these structures and the extensive network of roads required sophisticated knowledge of astronomy and engineering to position, and then very massive amounts of hierarchical, differentiated labor, carrying large stones and timber by brute force for up to 100 miles to the site; (3) the great houses and nearby smaller settlements were occupied in close proximity to each other at the same time, implying a marked social hierarchy*; (4) there are few hearths and little evidence of large-scale residential occupation in the great houses. They were occupied by small numbers of privileged elites. There might have been much more, but the seminar was necessarily brief.
We also leave this session with some obvious questions in mind: (1) who were the rulers of Chaco culture, and where did they come from? (2) why were the great houses so located and positioned? (3) how did elites of the priestly class marshal the vast labor necessary to construct the buildings and roads? (4) what was the nature of relationships between the great houses and the smaller nearby settlements? (5) what kinds of activities occurred in and around the great houses? (6) why after two and a half centuries of florescence was Chaco slowly and systematically abandoned? And (7) what accounts for the great cultural differences between Chaco culture and today’s Puebloan culture?
Sydney and I drove down from Santa Fe to meet Dave at the Santa Ana Casino in Bernalillo and start the two-and-a-half-hour drive northwest to the San Juan Basin and Chaco Canyon. The landscape is parched desert through miles of red rock ridges and multicolored synclines, curving bands of colored sediment wrapped in the sandstone. Cottonwoods along the distant streams form sinuous threads of blazing color in late October sun; it’s a brilliant day to get out and contemplate this monumental prehistoric rise and fall.
The climate out this way much of the time is not nearly so benign. Blazing hot in summer, freezing in winter, subject to constant howling winds through spring, and with less than nine inches of annual precipitation, it’s an unlikely setting for an advanced prehistoric culture. Some believe the forbidding location was chosen to accommodate the intricate astronomical alignments of the great houses over a region of many miles, and to amplify the grandeur of the buildings and spectacles in Downtown Chaco. The thought of such grandiose planning boggles the mind, but the conjecture makes sense of some of the evidence (e.g., the identical alignment of multiple buildings over long distances), and seems plausible. With no evidence of a large residential population, some even hold that the great buildings themselves were constructed primarily for show, much like grand ceremonial props. Scant organic remains and the presence of only a few hearths suggest that just a small cadre of elites lived in the great houses. The few burials found show that these elites were much better fed and accommodated than the commoners living nearby. They may have been ethnically different as well. But I’m getting a bit ahead of the story here.
The last thirty-five miles of road into the canyon are bone-jarringly rough. We’re in Dave’s Subaru Forester, a sturdy four-wheel drive, with a veteran back-road runner at the wheel. Even so, it’s a tooth-rattling last leg, and arrival at the park entrance is welcome relief. Dave uses his seniors’ national park pass to get us all admitted.
Fajada Butte, the majestic tower of stone where the famous sun dagger crosses the double-swirl petroglyph to indicate the solstice and each equinox, stands tall in the distance. It’s an impressive spire, with such a story to tell. The astronomical orientations ubiquitous at this and related sites were unknown until artist Anna Sofaer discovered the sun dagger and petroglyph during a field school in the canyon in 1977. Subsequently, her research with the Solstice Project has greatly elaborated knowledge of the astronomical orientations of the great houses in the canyon and outlying locations.
Despite her undeniably profound contributions, she tends to be looked down upon by the archaeological profession, as not being one of them. That’s par for the course for academics, but I greatly applaud her passion and the cosmic light she has thrown on the mystery of Chaco Canyon. Through her, we know the priesthood possessed subtle astronomical knowledge and commanded powerful signs from heaven to show to others on earth. This knowledge constituted what appears to be the most fundamental guiding principle in the design and placement of the great house structures.
What spiritual and temporal authority and power did that knowledge convey to its possessors? I believe it was great, as a demonstration that these priests understood the ways of heaven and could petition the gods for prosperity on earth. They also possessed desired goods, such as chocolate and jewelry from which commoners might benefit by association. Was it the basis for commanding the enormous amounts of labor necessary to build the great houses? It must surely have been the attraction bringing large crowds over long distances to celebrate massive seasonal ceremonials in the canyon. It may also have been the reason why this site was chosen in the first place – because the astronomical signs showed best at this location.
Dave leads us up a slope beneath a sandstone ledge just east of Pueblo Bonito in Downtown Chaco. He faces out over the canyon, spreads his arms to it, and says, “this is where the priests must have stood in ceremonies, presiding over all the commoners gathered below!” It surely is a grand view over the great canyon, with cottonwood-lined Chaco Wash below, and the smaller community of Casa Rinconada low up on the opposite slope. From inside the canyon, no horizon outside of it can be seen; the constrained view stays riveted on the great houses and sandstone canyon walls. The implication of Dave’s comment, that Chaco Culture was hierarchical* and led in great ceremonies by religious leaders, I believe is a necessary part of a good explanation.
Enterprises as formidable as the building of the great houses and the extensive network of roads require differentiated work and recruitment and oversight of a large labor force. In other words, hierarchy, specialization, coordinated management. The buildings were constructed to maximize dramatic effect, probably to dazzle visitors with spectacular grandiosity. My intuition about this, influenced by the Anna Sofaer documentary, is that exploitation of their astronomical knowledge conveyed powerful religious authority on the priesthood of Chaco, and this was a basis for tribute and allegiance from surrounding people over a large area. They must have wielded very powerful influence to accomplish all we see here and then much more across the region.
Dave ventures the opinion that by far the greatest proportion of labor to build the great houses and roads would have been voluntarily rendered, from religious motives. He suggests that they paid tribute willingly for the privilege of living near and participating in the majesty of the great ceremonies. Well, he knows much more than I, but I’m skeptical still.
When the leading experts are also obviously guessing, it seems open season for bold opinions out of left field. So, I’m following an intriguing, though nebulous notion from a Pueblo anthropologist in the Sofaer documentary, suggesting that the common people may have collaborated voluntarily in the beginning, but at some point a darker reality intervened and relations changed. Did power corrupt the priesthood? Did they use it coercively, either from the beginning or later in time? Did natural events, such as the long, severe drouth of 1130 – 1180 affect religious and civil authority? I would tentatively answer yes, to all three.
Today’s Pueblos, descendants of the Anasazi, may have their own ideas about what happened at Chaco in the tales they tell among themselves, but those stories are lamentably not accessible outside the kiva. In the very limited cases where Puebloan accounts are available, such as those expressed in the documentary, I believe they need to be taken quite seriously, though probably not literally. They should provide an indispensable complement to the archaeological evidence. I find the scarcity of such evidence strange and disconcerting. But in this day and age, it’s considered bad form to ask such questions, and they’re not likely to be received well if you do.
We eat lunches out of our backpacks at a picnic ground just down a slight slope from Pueblo Bonito, talking in amazement about it all, and soaking in glorious October sunshine. Ruins aside, I find the canyon itself awe-inspiring and mystic. I take just a moment to disengage, breathe deeply, and just soak in the canyon air and essence. I wish there were more time for that, but it’s a long way back to Santa Fe, by evening, and we keep going.
We move from there just across Chaco Wash to behold the great kiva of Casa Rinconada, low on the opposite slope of the canyon from Pueblo Bonito. This great kiva, the largest of the 400 kivas in Chaco Canyon, was built in this small settlement, where commoners lived, looking up to the elites living above them. It seems clear that the elites had this great kiva built for the benefit of this small settlement. Such quid pro quo might certainly have compensated a lot of labor, presumably non-coercively. But even if correct, that doesn’t rule out the notion of corrupted power and commoner rejection of it accounting for the abandonment of Chaco. The culture flourished for two and a half centuries, plenty of time for such changes to happen.
As we’re regarding the great kiva at Casa Rinconada, Dave exclaims “elk!” and grabs his Nikon with the telephoto lens. Sydney and I are squinting and turning our heads around to where the camera’s pointing, but we can’t make out anything that looks like an elk. In fact, we never did see them, until Dave showed us the elegant pictures he took of these magnificent beasts, who were in brush very far across the canyon. Super distance vision must be a great advantage for an archaeologist, and Dave’s rates world class. His is so good that I think it’s more like a mystical third-eye vision sense at work rather than just straight visual acuity. I’ve seen him name species of butterflies in the sunflowers from fifty paces. This makes me realize how much of what’s out there escapes my limited perception.
That is as far as we were able to go in our few hours in the canyon. I leave with a compulsion to find an explanation of the mystery, be it ever so tenuous. I know but don’t really care that an objectively correct one is not possible, even for the experts. That being so, I review the most fundamental points as they occur to me.
First, two basic inferences seem inarguable: (1) there was pronounced hierarchy, with elites living in the great houses, enjoying a superior diet and lifestyle, and commoners in the small settlements below; and (2) the elites possessed highly elaborated astronomical knowledge and engineering skill. Both points suggest Mesoamerican origin of the elites, because hierarchical culture and astronomical knowledge and engineering skill are highly characteristic of advanced cultures there, but they are not found in Pueblo culture. Evidence of chocolate, macaws, and jewelry at the site indicates active exchange with Mesoamerica.
Elites’ ability to predict and then demonstrate astronomical phenomena must have amazed commoners and given a clear sense that these people understood the ways of heaven and earth. This would provide a strong basis for spiritual and even temporal power. Association with these powerful people could also bring commoners exotic goods and proximity to status and power to enjoy. This would help recruit labor, and such labor would be in the service of pleasing the gods.
The nature of power relationships may have deteriorated over the long history of culture in the canyon. Increasing disparities in status and lifestyle between elites and commoners may have led to dissatisfaction, resentment, and need for increasing coercion to continue building in the canyon. Adverse weather events, such as the great drouth, and unpredictable astronomical events, such as a solar eclipse, supernova, and a distant volcano eruption that adversely affected weather and crop growth would have reduced confidence in the power of the elites to control the heavens. And all of this may ultimately have led to rejection of the direction that Chaco culture had taken and the slow, systematic abandonment of the great houses. The ritual burning of the kivas as they departed suggests a desire to cleanse the scene of what had happened there.
Perhaps I have this right, but probably I don’t. Further research is needed. Even so, it has been a thought-provoking, delightful trip. I’m deeply grateful to Dave and Sydney for sharing it. Either of them may have a better theory, but I’ll stick with mine. We’ll never really know for sure.
*I use “hierarchy” to denote power differences between a small cadre of elites at the top and more numerous strata below. I also use it to differentiate between the culture found at Chaco and more egalitarian Pueblo culture. I do not imply any particular way in which that power is exercised.
