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Overview
Chaco Canyon was the cultural and ceremonial center of the Ancestral Puebloan world from approximately 850 to 1150 CE, containing the largest buildings erected in pre-Columbian North America. Pueblo Bonito, the central great house, contained approximately 800 rooms and rose to four or five stories.
Historical significance
Chaco Culture National Historical Park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. The canyon functioned as a major regional center for ceremony, trade, and redistribution, connected to outlying communities across the Colorado Plateau by an extensive road network.
Key discoveries
- Pueblo Bonito — a D-shaped great house containing approximately 800 rooms and 32 kivas
- An ancient road network extending over 400 miles connecting Chaco to outlier communities
- Astronomical alignments in building construction corresponding to solstices and equinoxes
- Evidence of large-scale importation of timber from forests 70 miles distant
- More than 200,000 pieces of turquoise and artifacts from the Gulf of California, indicating broad trade networks
About the site
Chaco Culture National Historical Park protects the archaeological remains of the Chaco Phenomenon, a regional cultural flowering of the Ancestral Puebloan people that centered on Chaco Canyon from approximately 850 to 1150 CE. During this period, the canyon served as a hub of ceremony, trade, and redistribution for communities across the Colorado Plateau.
The canyon contains the densest concentration of great houses — monumental multistory masonry structures — in the Ancestral Puebloan world. The largest, Pueblo Bonito, was constructed in stages from approximately 850 to 1115 CE. At its peak the structure contained approximately 800 rooms, rose to five stories, and enclosed two large plazas. Archaeologists believe the structure served primarily a ceremonial and redistributive function rather than residential habitation.
Chaco was connected to more than 200 outlying communities across the San Juan Basin and beyond by a road network of unprecedented engineering. The roads, many of which are still visible in aerial photography, run in straight lines over distances of up to 50 miles, cutting through ridges and spanning washes on stairways and ramps rather than following topography.
The Chaco system declined rapidly around 1150 CE, likely due to a prolonged drought. The great houses were largely abandoned, and the regional population dispersed to outlying communities including those in the Mesa Verde region to the north.
Content for this page is derived from the Wikipedia article on Chaco Canyon and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Source: Wikipedia.
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