Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

----------------------------------8 Chaco Project Synthesisutilization or exploitation of the natural environmentaffected the character of that environment with regardto resource availability, landscape, patterns ofpredation, etc.; and 8) how resources, or lack of them,affected the character of the cultural adaptation. Afew years later, Judge (1975) outlined specificquestions pertaining to population, resources, andsocial organization that would be addressed for each ofthe periods defined within the Pue~lo occupation.Cutting-edge technology (e.g., computerizationof data and standardization of maps, as well as testingof remote sensing technology) would be employed.These tools and techniques would be combined withsurvey, excavation, and ethnohistorical documentationin new ways to achieve the goals stated above.Additionally, NPS managers were concernedwith preservation and maintenance of physical structures,especially the excavated great houses for whichthe park had been established. Preservation andmaintenance had been a function of the NPS RuinsStabilization Unit since its inception. Thus, projectsto develop, test, or apply equipment or materials forthe grouting of masonry walls and foundations, theuse of different mortars, and the investigation of waysto stop or arrest capillary water in standing walls wereinvestigated or monitored by park personnel. Theywill not be covered in this volume.Based on historical associations, a facility atUNM would be the administrative center for this 10-year program. Coordinated by the Chaco Center,numerous biological and geologic studies would becarried out by contractors with specialized skills andexpertise. Other research would be directed by asmall permanent staff, assisted by graduate studentsand archaeologists from UNM and other institutions.A central repository for Chaco-related materials wouldbe created, and a publications program initiated.In summary, the Chaco Prospectus outlined aprogram to improve the database for both natural andcultural resources, the testing of new researchtechniques, the curation of data, and the disseminationof results. This interdisciplinary study would examinethe archaeology and environment of Chaco Canyonand the surrounding area to better understand,manage, and interpret the park through all periods oftime. How these objectives were accomplished will bediscussed below and in the remainder of this volume.MethodsFor the study of natural resources and environment,contracts and cooperative research programsincluded professionals from the University of NewMexico (departments of Biology and Geology and theTechnical Information Center); the U. S. GeologicalSurvey; the Soil Conservation Service (the SoilConservation Service was abolished in 1994, and itsfunction subsumed by the Natural ResourcesConservation Service); the Laboratory of Tree-RingResearch at the University of Arizona; Simons, Li andAssociates; and a number of individuals. Methods aredocumented in their reports. This section will focuson new techniques for the discovery, recording, andanalysis of archaeological data, including applicationsof remote sensing technology.Remote Sensing TechniquesAlthough a number of remote sensing techniquesare part of an archaeologist's tool kit today, inthe 1970s the most common remote sensing tool wasthe aerial photograph. Both Carlos Vierra and CharlesLindbergh had recorded major areas of Chaco Canyonon black-and-white photographs taken from smallengineplanes during the summer of 1929 (Figures 1.4and 1.5). By the late 1960s, Gordon Vivian and hisson, Gwinn Vivian, had used aerial photographs toprepare maps and locate agricultural features and earlyPueblo roads (Gwinn Vivian 1960, 1972). By the1970s, however, a number of film types and platformswere available for testing. Different sensors wereviewing the earth from satellites, and others couldpossibly identify features below ground.Thomas R. Lyons designed a program thatwould evaluate these tools for archaeology and relatedstudies. He initially defined remote sensing as "atechnique for the acquisition of environmental data bymeans of non-contact instruments operating in variousregions of the electromagnetic spectrum from air andspace platforms" (Lyons and Hitchcock 1977a: 1).Photographic (optical, infrared, and microwave) andnonphotographic (radar, electric resistivity, magnetometer,radiometer, spectrometer, and scatter meter)sensors were to be examined to determine their scopeof use in cultural resource studies pertaining toexploration and discovery, regional and intrasiteanalysis, quantitative data acquisition, and historicaldocumentation (Lyons and Avery 1977).