Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

282 Chaco Project SynthesisDiscussionInvestigations by colleagues continue to amassdata from areas outside of Chaco Canyon and to refinemodels, as well as offer new perspectives on Pueblocultural development. NPS archaeologists recognizedthe need to incorporate this new information into asynthesis to bring the Chaco Project into the present.Through a cooperative agreement with the Universityof Colorado at Boulder, Stephen H. Lekson organizeda series of mini-conferences that addressed severalrelevant topics. Participants included NPS personnel,Chaco Project researchers, colleagues who were currentlyinvolved in research, and topical experts; theypresented their viewpoints, discussed the issues, andsynthesized the data and concepts resulting from eachconference. Once the series of conferences ended, acapstone conference provided representatives fromeach mini-conference and additional non-Chacoanscholars with the opportunity to focus on results andinterpretations (Lekson 2005; see also Appendix C).Concurrently, my responsibility was to synthesizethe Chaco Project. Although it would have beenideal for the results ofthe capstone conference and thisvolume to be published as companions, this was not tobe. My goal in the remainder of this chapter is thereforeto acknowledge questions that still remain, bothwith the database and our interpretations or models ofsocial organization. The reader is encouraged to examineAppendix C for citations that provide in-depthdiscussions on specific topics.As Sebastian (2005) concluded, we still do nothave answers to many of our questions. In previouschapters, the lack of clarity about the function ofarchitectural features (e.g., great houses, large trashmiddens) was evident. Our estimates for popUlationsneed refining, as do our estimates for the number ofpeople that could be supported by farming in ChacoCanyon. Currently, Larry Benson (personal communication,2005) is re-evaluating soil productivity andwater quality in the canyon; and the number of peoplethat could be supported turns out to be even fewerthan the approximately 2,000 proposed by Windes(1987a[I]). Thus, any model of Chacoan societybased on currently available estimates is subject tofurther evaluation. We do have more data, moremodels, and more knowledge of where our problemslie (Mills 2002; Sebastian 2005).During the Chaco Project, the concept of Chaco,and things Chacoan, was greatly expanded. We nowask what Chaco represents (see articles in Kantner andKintigh 2005; Kantner and Mahoney 2000). Once werecognized that masonry styles and some architecturalfeatures present in Chaco Canyon were found inconsiderable numbers across a larger landscape, theneed arose for a definition of the territory encompassed.Tainter and Gillio (1980: 102) and GwinnVivian (1990, 1996) were among the first to questionthe extent of things Chacoan. Lekson (1991) includedany settlement with a "big bump" as part of his ChacoWorld; it covered much of the eastern Anasazi region.Doyel and Lekson (1992) described the eleventh- andtwelfth-century Chaco World as extending from MesaVerde to the Puerco-Little Colorado, but did not includethe upper Rio Grande or Kayenta areas. Yet LA835 on the Pojoaque grant in the northern Rio Grandeis a settlement composed of 15 small pueblos withassociated pit structures and a great kiva that span theperiod from the middle A.D. 800s through the earlyA.D. 1100s (Wiseman 1995). It is contemporaneouswith the Bonito phase developments in Chaco Canyonand the San Juan Basin. The presence of Red MesaBlack-on-white pottery suggests communicationbetween the two regions. Because LA 835 lacks agreat house, it is not included among the possible 224sites in the Chaco World database (Kantner2003a:Table 1). Our criteria for what is Chacoanneeds greater consensus (Kantner 2003b)."Communities" were thought to be composed ofa Chacoan structure and surrounding smaller sites (R.Powers et al. 1983). Wilcox (1996) used a 35-km(22-m) radius around community centers to plot greathouse communities across the landscape and suggestwhich ones might be interrelated and/or linked toothers. While some communities were spatially segregated,others were not. The size of a traditionallydefined community in which face-to-face interactioncould take place may not have included sufficientpeople to supply marriage partners (Mahoney 2000b).Further investigation by Gilpin (2003) indicated thatChaco-era community boundaries must at times haveincluded multiple clusters of habitation sites, and thatsome boundaries must have been porous, whichsuggested subregional inter-relationships.Chacoan structures in various physiographicregions were not identical in terms of masonry styles,