Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

264 Chaco Project SynthesisChaco Project personnel tended to view thisearly Pueblo world from the canyon looking out.They proposed that Chaco Canyon was a center,initially for the redistribution of goods (Judge 1979).When the redistribution model could not be supported,it was viewed as a ceremonial or ritual center (Judge1983a, 1989). Analyses of Chacoan great houses (R.Powers et al. 1983; Schelberg 1984) indicated thatthere were at least three size groups throughout theSan Juan Basin; thus, the hierarchical systemsuggested by burial data (Akins 1986; Akins andSchelberg 1984) inside the canyon was supported. Anintegrated system centered on ritual activities wasconsidered the most likely manner in which it wasorganized.Recently, the extent of the system has beenquestioned (Kantner2003b; Gwinn Vivian 1996). Dowe include every big bump on the horizon-or werethere discrete entities organized around a peer politysystem, as suggested by Durand (1992), and laterdescribed by Wilcox (1996)? Numerous models havebeen proposed. Vivian (1996) reviewed the recentscenarios for Chaco: Chaco as eastern Anasazi(Breternitz et al. 1982; Lekson 1991; Marshall andDoyel 1981); Chaco as a redistribution/ceremonialcenter (Judge 1989; Neitzel 1989; Powers 1984b;ScheIb erg 1984); Chaco as Pueblo enterprise (Irwin­Williams and Shelley 1980; Sebastian 1991, 1992b;H. Toll 1985; H. Toll and McKenna 1997; GwinnVivian 1989, 1990); Chaco as a state (Wilcox 1993);and Chaco as a cosmography (Doxtater 1991; Fritz1978; Marshall 1992; Marshall and Sofaer 1988;Sofaer, Marshall, and Sinclair 1989). Other researchprovokes additional questions: Was it a peacefulperiod (Le Blanc 1999; Stuart 2000), when Chacofunctioned as a central place to even out thedistribution of resources? Was there warfare-or evencannibalism as Turner and Turner (1999) suggest?Just what does Chaco represent within the broaderframework ofthe American Southwest (Wilcox 1996)?There is variability among great houses; e.g.,differences in their masonry styles and communitylayout in subareas (Kantner 1996; Meyer 1999; VanDyke 1999). Add to this variability the recognitionthat the roads are not a system as previously thought.Both Roney (1992) and Gwinn Vivian (1997a, 1997b)reviewed existing data and concluded that there areonly three major roads leading from Chaco Canyon tothe edges of the basin. The Great North Road ends atKutz Canyon; it has been assumed that travelersfollowed the canyon as far as Salmon ruin, andperhaps made their way north from Salmon to Aztec(Gabriel 1991). Marshall and Sofaer (1988) proposedthat Kutz Canyon may have been the end point; thedepth of the canyon may represent the nadir, orunderworld, from which the Pueblo people emerged.The South Road heads toward Hosta Butte-possiblythe zenith point-and is suggestive of a cosmologicalor ritual meaning for its construction. The CoyoteCanyon Road heads west, but no specific cosmologicaltie has been offered. Yet Fowler and Stein (1992)document road segments leading from one great houseto another in Manuelito Canyon. Because the greathouses it links are not contemporary but rather seemto be spaced from north to south toward Zuni fromabout A.D. 1200, the implication is thatthey represent"roads through time." Ritual may have been onefunction of such roads; memory may have beenanother (Van Dyke 2003).Were outlying communities linked together?Wilcox (1993, 1996, 1999) suggested that there werenumerous territories, some independent and someinterconnected. Assuming that a 22-mile radiusaround a great house represents the distance a personwould be able to travel during a day, he plotted theknown great houses and drew circles around them todetermine the possible overlaps or linkages amongcommunities that would have been integrated into asingle polity. The graphics do not support a wellintegratedregional system. More recently, Wilcoxhas been working with colleagues to map all sites with50 or more rooms in the Southwest through time.These data are plotted by 50-year periods and illustrateslow movement out of the Four Comers area fromA.D. 1200 through 1600. Settlement clusters by A.D.1600 are those found by Spanish explorers (Hill et al.2004). These data support Schillaci's (2003; Schillaciet al. 2001) craniometric studies that indicate relationshipsamong Historic Pueblo people and sites in theSan Juan Basin. The data also suggest that the movementof people through time was a common practice.These data beg for further investigation to provideexplanations of how four contemporary linguisticgroups were organized at a much earlier time, howthey initially came together, what caused them todiverge from the organization represented in thearchaeological record around A.D. 1050 to 1100,