Category: Chaco Culture National Historical Park

chaco culture: pueblo arroyo & the casa rinconada community

wanderessence1025 January 13, 2019

Pueblo Arroyo, Spanish for “village by the wash,” was built over a short time by Chacoans. The round tri-wall structure on the west side of the building is rare in the Chaco Region. The building’s position gave an unobstructed view through South Gap, between West and South Mesas.

Pueblo Arroyo

Pueblo Arroyo

Pueblo Arroyo

Pueblo Arroyo

The trail through Casa Rinconada and nearby villages is about a half mile long.

All over the Southwest, I found these pink-tipped grasses, but I’m not sure what they are.

pink tipped grasses

Distinctive masonry was developed at Chaco Canyon that added to the structure and stability of the large buildings. The trail through the Casa Rinconada Community showcases some of the diversity of architecture that existed within Chacoan culture.

On the canyon’s south side, Casa Rinconada is the largest excavated kiva in the park. The trail to this great house passes a dozen “small house sites” contemporary with Casa Rinconada but different in construction and function.

The great kiva named Casa Rinconada was a massive ceremonial and community building. Kivas are buildings used in Puebloan cultures for religious worship, similar to churches, mosques, and synagogues. Casa Rinconada is the largest excavated great kiva in Chaco Canyon and one of the largest in the entire Chacoan world. The alignment of the kiva’s architectural features are set on a north-south axis.

The Casa Rinconada great kiva was built atop a natural hillside, within the community of small villages. Across the canyon, Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo del Arroyo, and Pueblo Alto formed the core area of Chaco.

Casa Rinconda has an entryway through a north antechamber through which people entered.

Great Kiva at Casa Rinconada

Great kivas may have been partially or completely roofed. Circular masonry-lined pits housed four massive upright timbers that supported the roof. Its actual configuration remains a mystery.

Great kivas commonly contained masonry benches, but it isn’t certain if they functioned as seating areas. In Casa Rinconada, there are 34 wall niches set into the interior. One of the niches seems to be a solstice, or astronomical, marker. At sunrise on summer solstice, sunlight passes through an opening in the eastern portion of the wall and shines on the interior western wall. It is not certain if this was intentional as researchers believe the kiva once had rooms surrounding the outer wall which would have blocked the sunlight.

Great Kiva at Casa Rinconada

Building sites at Chaco were chosen to allow great houses to communicate with one another by signal fires. Great houses were connected to other public buildings by roads and earthen architecture. Roads also connected the Chacoan world with mesas, lakes, and mountains within the sacred landscape.

The Casa Rinconada Community in Chaco Canyon

Of course, I collected my sticker and cancellation stamp for Chaco Culture National Historic Park.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park

I left Chaco Canyon at 4:00, taking the northern dirt road toward 550 N en route to Farmington, New Mexico. For the first four miles, the road was very bumpy. People were speeding and kicking up so much dust, I had to keep a good distance behind them. Then, I drove over a 19-mile gravel road; this was worse than the southern approach as the car tires kept skidding out on the gravel whenever I took a corner too fast. This exit out was much more heavily traveled than the southern route I took into the park.

I was relieved to finally reach the paved road. I passed the defunct Blanco Trading Post and buttes scattered here and there on the horizon. When I arrived in Farmington, New Mexico, I thought it looked as derelict as it did 39 years back, when my first husband and I dropped in to visit my Uncle Gibby, my mother’s brother. He’s no longer living, so I checked into the Brentwood Inn and Suites, which seemed to be run by Native Americans. There were some shady-looking characters about, but the room seemed fine. At The Chile Pod, I enjoyed red wine and a Navajo taco: a sopapilla covered in beans, cheese, chilies, lettuce and tomato.

Information above came from various brochures created by the National Park Service.

*Thursday, May 17, 2018*

16,489 steps, or 6.99 miles.

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On Sundays, I post about hikes or walks that I have taken in my travels; I may also post on other unrelated subjects. I will use these posts to participate in Jo’s Monday Walks or any other challenges that catch my fancy.

This post is in response to Jo’s Monday Walk: A Romp in El Rompido.

chaco culture: chetro ketl & pueblo bonito

wanderessence1025 January 6, 2019

Archeologists use the word “great house” to describe large sites such as Chetro Ketl and Pueblo Bonito. They share many architectural features such as planned layouts, multi-storied construction, distinctive masonry, sprawling rooms, plazas and huge subterranean ceremonial chambers called “great kivas.”

Chetro Ketl is the second largest great house in Chaco Culture National Historical Park. It covers more than three acres and includes an immense elevated earthen plaza that stands 12 feet above the valley floor. The trail here offers a unique view into the lower sections of the building and the construction of the great kiva.

Chetro Ketl

Here, builders quarried rocks for construction, harvested timbers on distant mountains, and erected massive blocks of rooms during building episodes. The people built dams and canals, and engineered straight avenues and “roads” that crisscrossed the region and connected Chaco to distant communities.

Chetro Ketl

All of these projects required complex planning, organization, and cooperation on a region-wide level.

masonry at Chetro Ketl

masonry at Chetro Ketl

Chetro Ketl

kiva at Chetro Ketl

wall at Chetro Ketl

kiva at Chetro Ketl

Chetro Ketl

Chetro Ketl

Chetro Ketl

masonry at Chetro Ketl

Chetro Ketl

It was very hot and dry walking through these complexes, with no shade in sight, and I ran out of water quickly. I could see my car the whole time, but I didn’t want to walk back to it and then have to retrace my steps. I should have gone back to the car, because in the heat of the canyon, I felt parched, sunburned, and slightly dizzy. A sign in a pit toilet warned about heatstroke, and I wondered if I felt this way due to the power of suggestion, or if I were really dehydrated.

Walking on the path along the cliff from Chetro Ketl to Pueblo Bonito, I found a most unlikely character.

sea creature at Chaco Canyon

Pueblo Bonito is the core of the Chaco complex and the largest great house. It is deeper into the canyon than Chetro Ketl. Built in stages between the mid 800s and the early 1100s, Pueblo Bonito reached at least four stories with over 600 rooms and 40 kivas. The building served many functions, including ceremony, administration, trading, storage, hospitality, communication, astronomy and burial of the honored dead. Only a small portion seemed to serve as living quarters.

Pueblo Bonito

The graveled trail through Pueblo Bonito is 0.73 miles roundtrip.

Overlooking Pueblo Bonito

Researchers believe great houses were examples of public architecture, used only periodically when ceremonies, commerce or trading drew people together from other areas. It is believed these great houses did not have large resident populations.

Pueblo Bonito

Lt. James Simpson and his Mexican guide, Carravahal, gave Pueblo Bonito its name (“Beautiful Town” in Spanish) in 1849, during a military expedition into Navajo territory. For the Hopi and the Pueblo people of New Mexico, this great house is an important part of their ancestral homeland — a special place where clans stopped and lived during their sacred migrations. Descendants of these groups continue to return to this place to honor the spirits of their ancestors.

Pueblo Bonito is the most thoroughly investigated, visited, and celebrated cultural site in Chaco Canyon. This was the center of the Chacoan world, a world that eventually covered much of the present-day southwest, including the San Juan Basin in New Mexico and portions of Colorado, Arizona and Utah.

Pueblo Bonito

Great kivas are found in nearly every Chacoan culture built between 900-1200. Often located within or near the plazas of great houses, they were central to communities. They were probably used for ceremonial purposes and could have accommodated hundreds of people.

kiva at Pueblo Bonito

kiva at Pueblo Bonito

The building’s unique D-shaped geometry enclosed two plazas with dozens of ceremonial kivas. Straight avenues linked the building with nearby and distant great houses.

Pueblo Bonito

wall at Pueblo Bonito

Pueblo Bonito

Pueblo Bonito

walls at Pueblo Bonito

Burials uncovered at Pueblo Bonito contained large quantities of worked shell, turquoise pendants and beads, conch-shell trumpets, painted flutes, and other items perhaps representing people of higher rank or status in the Chacoan society.

Pueblo Bonito

While great houses such as Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl were being used, smaller, more typical villages throughout the canyon were also inhabited, suggesting that different groups of people, perhaps speaking different languages, lived side by side.

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This post is in response to Jo’s Monday Walk: Canalside at Leeds in Christmas.

chaco culture: hungo pavi

wanderessence1025 December 30, 2018

Hungo Pavi sits at the mouth of Mockingbird Canyon at Chaco Culture National Historical Park. It is an unexcavated Chacoan great house (monumental public building) containing over 150 rooms, a great kiva, and an enclosed plaza. It is a good example of what Chacoan sites look like without excavations — covered with a protective blanket of wind-blown sand and native vegetation. It is strategically located near natural drainages, and several seeps and springs. It was occupied from 1000 to the 1250s.

I take a short trail around the building and through the plaza, admiring the structure of the great house against the natural cliffs.

Hungo Pavi

Most of the great houses at Chaco Canyon are oriented to solar, lunar and cardinal directions, and some great houses incorporated sophisticated astronomy markers.

Hungo Pavi

People congregated at Chaco Canyon because it was a sacred place. It may have been considered a “center place” that bound people together through a shared vision. Or it may have been simply a trading center where turquoise was traded for macaws, copper bells, shells and other items from distant lands.

Hungo Pavi

I pass an ancient stairway carved into the cliff.

ancient staircase carved into cliff at Hungo Pavi

Masonry at Hungo Pavi

Hungo Pavi

Today, many of the Southwest’s tribes are Chaco descendents. These tribes see Chaco as an important step on their clans’ sacred migration paths, and a spiritual place to be honored and respected.

Hungo Pavi

cacti at Hungo Pavi

cacti at Hungo Pavi

Hungo Pavi

masonry at Hungo Pavi

Hungo Pavi

Two masonry styles are shown below.

masonry styles at Hungo Pavi

back wall of Hungo Pavi

back wall of Hungo Pavi

masonry at Hungo Pavi

Hungo Pavi

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This post is in response to Jo’s Monday Walk: Blessing the Fishermen.

chaco culture national historical park: the una vida trail

wanderessence1025 December 23, 2018

Chaco Culture National Historic Park was a major cultural center between 850 and 1250 AD, and it is remarkable both for its monumental architecture and its status as a center of trade, politics and ceremony. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

The park is in northwestern New Mexico, and can only be accessed by dirt roads. From the south, one must traverse a 20-mile-long rough dirt road, and since I drove from Gallup, NM, this was the way I came.

From Gallup, I drove past the spectacular Red Rocks, the Wind Bells Indian Village and the Continental Divide, and then through the San Jose Watershed. I stopped at Giant to buy a huge bottle of water, and stood behind a Native American man buying a 12-pack of Budweiser at 10:00 a.m.

Red Rocks, New Mexico

As I continued towards Chaco Canyon, scruffy dogs scrounged about beside derelict buildings in a desolate landscape. An 8-sided hogan stood on a homestead with other prefabricated buildings. A man walked along the desolate highway with his head hung low. Hunched forlornly beside the roadside was a mobile home with a junkyard attached; weeds and vines swallowed a school bus and other vehicles.

Driving on the 20-mile dirt road felt like one of my old adventures when I lived in Oman.

I encountered curious cows who checked me out when I stopped beside them.

Cows on the road to Chaco Canyon

Clouds swept across the blue skies and the air was fresh and cool.

the dirt road to Chaco Culture National Historical Park

the road to Chaco Canyon

another cow friend

the road to Chaco Canyon

moose sign

A thousand years ago, this valley was the center of a thriving culture that lasted more than 300 years, beginning in the mid 800s. The people built massive Great Houses of multiple stories with hundreds of rooms. The architecture used masonry techniques unique for the time. Construction was planned from the start, rather than rooms being added as needed, and took place over decades or even centuries. Architectural features were uniquely Chacoan.

Chaco had become the ceremonial, administrative, and economic center of the San Juan Basin, exerting extensive influence over the area by 1050. Dozens of great houses in Chaco Canyon were connected by roads to more than 150 great houses throughout the region. It is surmised that the great houses were used during times of ceremony, commerce, and trading when temporary populations came to the canyon for these events.

The Chacoan Great House (monumental public building) closest to the visitor center is Una Vida. Construction began close to 850 AD and continued for over 250 years. Una Vida is Spanish for “one life;” the site was named by a military expedition that discovered the structure. It contains about 100 ground floor rooms and kivas, and a great kiva in an enclosed plaza. Only about 20 rooms in this large building have been excavated, first in the early 1900s and then again in the 1950s by the National Park Service. Centuries of blowing sand have covered the rooms with a protective blanket of sand and native vegetation.

The Una Vida Trail at Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a 1/2 mile round-trip trail plus 1/4 mile to see the petroglyphs.

Una Vida trail

Una Vida is a large multi-storied public building with distinctive masonry, formal architecture and a great kiva. Situated at the top of a natural rise in the landscape, it dominated the nearby community. By the time great houses were built in Chaco Canyon, agriculture was well-established in the area.

Una Vida Trail

Una Vida Great House

The early great houses such as Una Vida were a much larger building style than other structures in the region. The rough-looking walls were among the first built at the site.

One early masonry style used large tabular sandstone blocks chinked with smaller stones set in mortar.

Una Vida construction

The Chacoans developed more intricate masonry styles through the mid- to late-1000s. Yet they covered many walls in plaster, sometimes with painted or engraved decorations.

Great House construction at Una Vida

Una Vida is an “L” shaped, 2- to 3-story building which opened toward the southeast. Single story rooms fronted the plaza and stepped back to two stories further from the plaza. A few room blocks at the southwest corner rose to 3-stories.

Una Vida Great House

Una Vida Great House

The earliest walls were one stone thick and bonded with generous courses of mud mortar. To make higher, longer walls, the Chacoan builders widened the rubble cores and added structural stone veneers and internal wooden supports.

Great house construction

View overlooking the Una Vida Great House

I climbed up a slope to two petroglyph panels. Petroglyphs are images that are pecked, incised, and abraded into the sandstone to create designs. It is difficult to know the meaning of the images today, but Puebloan and Navajo people today often recognize images as symbols for specific clans, or elements in stories.

Petroglyphs

Coming back down the trail from the petroglyphs

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This post is in response to Jo’s Monday Walk: Blessing the Fishermen.

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