Performance Space, Political Theater, and Audibility in Downtown Chaco

Chaco Canyon, NM, USA, was the center of an Ancestral Puebloan polity from approximately 850–1140 CE, and home to a dozen palatial structures known as “great houses” and scores of ritual structures called “great kivas”. It is hypothesized that the 2.5 km2 centered on the largest great house, Pueblo Bonito (i.e., “Downtown Chaco”), served as an open-air performance space for both political theater and sacred ritual. The authors used soundshed modeling tools within the Archaeoacoustics Toolbox to illustrate the extent of this performance space and the interaudibility between various locations within Downtown Chaco. Architecture placed at liminal locations may have inscribed sound in the landscape, physically marking the boundary of the open-air performance space. Finally, the implications of considering sound within political theater will be discussed.

The Built Environment

The most intensively studied societies within Southwest archaeology—the Ancestral “Pueblos”—have been defined by their architecture. Stark village ruins of stone and adobe, some perched high in cliff settings, dot much of the region and are today its major tourist attractions. But as this chapter demonstrates, the architecture and built landscapes of the greater Southwest were vastly more diverse, ranging from the ephemeral wikiup-like structures of early hunter-gatherers, to the various pithouse forms and configurations of the Archaic and later periods, to the monumental trincheras, ball courts, and platform mounds of the southern Southwest, to the great kivas, great houses, and road systems of the Chacoan world. This chapter surveys that diversity and considers the way the built environment has been mobilized as evidence to make claims about social and political organization, religion practice, cosmology, mobility, and scale of collective labor projects within studies of ancient Southwest communities.

Ritual Change and the Distant: Mesoamerican Iconography, Scarlet Macaws, and Great Kivas in the Mimbres Region of Southwestern New Mexico

The Mimbres Classic period (A .D. 1000–1130) in southwestern New Mexico was marked by dramatic and complex changes. The use of Great Kivas ended, and macaws and Mesoamerican-inspired iconography appeared. We argue that these events were systematically related and signify observable changes in Mimbres ritual economy. The presence of macaws, images of macaws, and representations of characters and motifs from the Hero Twins saga suggest that ideology accompanied macaws north from the Gulf Coast of Mexico. We recognize and discuss episodes and icons from the saga painted on Mimbres black-on-white bowls and propose that the macaws and narrative reached the Mimbres region through direct acquisition rather than down-the-line trade. This research has significant implications for the importance of long distance travel to faraway places and interaction with distant peoples, Mesoamerican-southwestern United States relationships, changing religious practices in non-hierarchical societies, and the adoption of extrinsic elements into local settings.

Ancestors and the sun: astronomy, architecture and culture at Chaco Canyon

Three architectural traditions with astronomical associations have been identified among the ‘Great Houses’ and ‘Great Kivas’ of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Great Houses and one Great Kiva built during the height of construction activity (AD 1020–1100), the Bonito Phase, include front-facing south-southeast (SSE) orientations, and cardinal north-south and/or east-west (NS/EW) alignments. We present ethnographic material supporting our previous proposal that the SSE orientation is probably linked to migration traditions and ancestor veneration. We also confirm that a majority of Late Bonito Phase Great Houses (built after A.D. 1100) exhibit a third astronomical tradition: five of the principal in-canyon Great Houses built at that time were positioned at or near observing locations that could have functioned as solstice calendrical stations. Through use of these locations for public ceremonies, the Chacoan elite could demonstrate astronomical knowledge and ritual power. These findings provide support for Van Dyke's hypothesis that construction during this period was intended to reinvigorate a faltering system. One ‘Chaco halo’ Great House, Bis sa'ani, incorporates all three traditions. We suggest that temporal analysis of these traditions improves understanding of migration paths and shifting balances of power and social dominance among ancestral Pueblo culture groups.

Production and Consumption in a Sacred Economy: The Material Correlates of High Devotional Expression at Chaco Canyon

The role of production, exchange, and consumption in Chaco Canyon can be analyzed successfully only when the system as a whole is considered. A cognitive-processual approach is used here to develop a model of Chaco as an essentially egalitarian society, centered on the Canyon as a Location of High Devotional Expression. The production and consumption of goods is understood in the context of an ideational/devotional significance of the great houses and great kivas of Chaco and of periodic visits made to them for devotional purposes (i.e., pilgrimages). Consideration is given to the structure of regional pilgrimages and the function of the multiple great houses in Chaco Canyon. This model is compared with two others: Chaco as a secondary trading center and Chaco as an elite power base. Production and consumption in both sacred and profane contexts are examined in order to distinguish among the three models.