Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

- --------------------------------------------------------------------Chapter FourThe Foundations of Chacoan Society:Basketmaker III to Pueblo IIt was for the purpose of obtaining much-needed information on the house and village types of the fmalperiod in the Basket Maker era that the excavations in the Chaco Canyon were conducted. Most of theprevious work had been done at sites located in caves where later occupants had to some degree disturbedthe older remains. Occasional Basket Maker III pithouses had been excavated but not in sufficient numbersto warrant definite conclusions as to their types. The Chaco Canyon site was an especially fortunate onebecause it was in the open and no later buildings had been erected upon it. Ii was an isolated example ofa ~ingle cultural stage. (Roberts 1929:7)Almost nothing is known about the Pueblo I village layout-or about the Pueblo I period in general-inthe Chaco Region. House Cat Shabik'eshchee Village with its associated contiguous circular storage cistswith a living area in front has been cited above as representing an early stage in the development of thehabitation-unit layout. Ruins of what are probably small habitation units of Late Pueblo I date are fairlyfrequent around the smaller water courses of the region. Long alignments of rooms, such as are typicalof the larger northern San Juan Region units, do not seem to occur in this region. (Bullard 1962: 108-109)By 1969, excavated sites in Chaco Canyonattributed to the Basketmaker III - Pueblo I period(Appendix A) provided limited information on thetransition between these two periods and the socialorganization of the people living at that time. During1926 and 1927 at Shabik'eshchee Village, Roberts(1929) cleared a total of 20 pithouses, over 48 storagebins, a large circular structure or great kiva, and acourt; he suggested use from Basketmaker III throughPueblo 1. The pithouses exhibited variability in shape;Roberts (1929) suggested evolution from circular andoval to rectangular. The antechambers also werereduced in size and transformed into ventilators.Roberts thought two major periods of occupation,separated by a distinct break that could be attributed toa reversion to a nomadic life style, were indicated.Shabik'eshchee Village was considered the BasketmakerIII type site (Bullard 1962: 101). Nine tree-ringspecimens from the great kiva indicated constructionaround A.D. 753, and four from House H clusteredaround A.D. 757 (Bannister 1965: 192, Table XL).These dates are late compared with those reported forsimilar sites elsewhere (Bannister 1965: 199; McKenna1986:54-58; Truell 1986: 139; Wills and Windes1989); thus, people in Chaco were thought to havelagged behind their neighbors in cultural development.Based on ceramic types recovered, Late PuebloI pit structures that had evolved into above-groundstructures were difficult to assign to a specific period.Data from the Three C site (Gordon Vivian 1965)included a variety of wall construction methods; thearchitecture was interpreted as Pueblo I but theceramics as Pueblo II. This supported Bullard's (1962:175) comment that the division between Pueblo I andPueblo II was blurred. The architectural pattern thatwas carried forward into Pueblo II was retained in theearliest forms of great houses that appeared during thelate A.D. 800s, which is approximately where Vivianplaced the Three C occupation. Bullard had concluded,however, that the Basketmaker III and PuebloI periods were more like each other than either periodwas to the preceding or following one.