Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

Explaining Pueblo Social Organization 283sizes of sites, layout, ceramic wares, or lithic materials,which suggests that the great house communitieswere not part of an interdependent orintegrated network (Kantner 2003b; VanDyke 2003).Mahoney (2000a: 17) proposed that the "ChacoExperience" may be a better description of the participationof the diverse popUlations that may have haddifferent roles for leaders and different motivations forconstructing great houses. She asked why leaderswould join this overarching experience. Did theyrecognize that mutual help could be best obtainedthrough an ideological structure that legitimized theirroles? Were there convergences of rituai traditionsamong multi-ethnic and multi-lingual groups that mayhave used great houses for exclusive ceremonies byspecific lineages, clans, or sodalities, and great kivasas inclusive ritual facilities? Or were local greathouses constructed to emulate Chacoan symbolism, inorder to compete for resources in an increasinglypopulated world? Mahoney (2000a: 17) suggested thatwe evaluate three possible models for leadership:• those using ritual to legitimize coercive powerand/or control over resources,• those who obtain economic privileges because oftheir status, and• those whose power is situational.The power base for Chaco and how it might haveintegrated diverse, and sometimes distant, Puebloareas received attention. When Judge (1979, 1983)suggested that Chaco may have functioned as a ritualor ceremonial center that pilgrims visited on a scheduledbasis, he envisioned resident priests whoprovided ritual service in exchange for economicgoods (see Earle [2001], and Renfrew [2001], formore recent discussion). Recently, Yoffee (2001)defined "rituality" to include political activities carriedout through ritual hierarchies, and applied this conceptto Chaco.. . . we can begin to cull elements of thoseinvestigations that do not assume thatChaco society is 'integrated' in any functional,systematic way. Rather, variousgroups and social identities seem to havecoexisted in Chaco within the context ofthe relations that called them into being.Although these relations are, at least inpart, irreducibly ceremonial, as it seems tomany, my term 'rituality' is not intendedto substitute a mode of cultural integrationin place of what others have seen as apolitical integration. Whatever coherencethe Chaco rituality might have had was theproduct of many local and regional decisions,and such stability as Chaco mayhave achieved covered over the multiplecleavage planes that made Chaco, andindeed much of the prehistoric Southwest,a ciassic example of organizational flexibilityin a harsh and unstable environment.(Yoffee 2001:67)Yoffee saw singularity in Chaco between A.D.900 and 1125 through the cotr.utt1on architecturalfeatures and imports held together through an overarchingceremonial system. He saw plurality throughdifferences in great house plans, communities, and thelinguistic and ethnic variety that must have beenpresent. He proposed that competition existed betweenthose performing ritual and local socialorganizations; some competition may have beenviolent, especially during a period of climatic disaster.He accepted John Ware's (2001; Ware and Blinman2000) admonition that whatever model we derive forChaco must lead into the present Historic Pueblopeople.If Chaco was organized as a rituality, we need todemonstrate how a hierarchy came to exist; the type ofhierarchy that existed; and how the hierarchy wastransformed, both before and after A.D. 1050 and1100. Cameron (1995), LeBlanc (2000), Lekson(1996), Lekson and Cameron (1995), and Stuart(2000) have begun to explore a trajectory for Pueblopeoples that leads from the past to present. Lekson(1999) provided a model for where Pueblo peoplewent after leaving Chaco Canyon; his stance assumeselite political leadership, which is not necessarily thecase .As Schelberg (1992) proposed, some type ofleadership existed by Basketmaker III. Sebastian's(1992) first attempt to evaluate how leadership aroseand was instituted has been followed by Aldenderfer(1993), who examined the role and function of ritualin foraging societies (e. g., those in the process of