Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

Chapter NineExplaining Pueblo Social OrganizationMost other peoples ... have just set up for themselves, and later fallen under the domination of,rulers temporal or religious; aristocracies or theocracies have sprung up, and the gap between themasses and the classes has become wider and wider. But among the Pueblos no such tendency evermade headway; there were neither very rich nor very poor, every family lived in the same sort ofquarters, and ate the same sort of food, as every other family. Pre-eminence in social or religiouslife was to be gained solely by individual ability and was the reward of services rendered to thecommunity. (Kidder 1924: 130-131)At the inception of the Chaco Project, proposedexplanations for the development of Pueblo socialorganization in Chaco Canyon were based mainly ontwo perspectives-external influences and indigenousgrowth. Those who believed the Chaco culture was aresult of indigenous Pueblo development reliedheavil y on ethnographic analogy. Historic Pueblogroups that spoke several different languages werethought to be egalitarian social units. Migrationstories documented their emergence and movementsacross the Southwestern landscape; migration providedexplanations for changes in the archaeological record(e.g., Judd 1954,1964; Gordon Vivian and Mathews1965). Others (e.g., Di Peso [1968a, 1968b, 1974];Frisbie [1972]; Kelley and Kelley [1975]) consideredwhat effect external contact with migrating entrepreneurs,priests, political leaders, or warriors mighthave had on the American Southwest. Duringarchaeology'S "Processual" period (Wiley and Sabloff1980), Chaco Project investigators shied away fromethnographic analogy; they borrowed from otherfields-e.g., systems theory, cultural ecology, andinformation theory-and utilized insights gained fromcross-cultural comparisons. Some evidence-e. g. ,grave goods, differences among human remains(Akins 1986; Akins and Schelberg 1984), and analysisof great house size (R. Powers et al. 1983; Schelberg1984)-suggested the possibility of ranked leadershipduring the Chaco florescence. With Chaco Canyon asthe center, an organized system may have encompassedthe San Juan Basin and beyond. Models wereproffered and debated to explain how this systemoperated within the Chaco World. Models derived inthe 1970s and 1980s can be, and have been, improVed(see Lekson 2005; Mills 2002). This chapter willreview these models, indicate some discrepancies, andconsider the role of ritual in continuing research.External InfluencesFor both DiPeso (1968a, 1965b, 1974) and J.Kelley (1980; Kelley and Kelley 1975), Chaco Canyonwas an important northernmost node in a long-distancenetwork that would have controlled the turquoisemines located in the Cerrillos mining district, about160 km (100 mi) east in the Rio Grande Valley. Thisblue-green stone was one of several in that color rangethat were considered valuable by Mesoamerican elite.Kelley and Kelley (1975) proposed that initialtraders exploring the region reached Chaco Canyon byA.D. 600 or 700, and established great kivas as theirloci for operations. After a hiatus between A.D. 800and 925, contact was renewed as populations in allareas continued to grow and expand. Between A.D.1020 and 1300, southern leaders were thought to haveexploited the Anasazi region through a west Mexicocenter. Construction of core-and-veneer architecturalfeatures would have been taught to the Chacoans as aresult of intensive interaction with people who