Chaco Canyon and closely associated topics
A visitor pointed out a problem with some photos missing from a few of my Chaco pages (www.mjhinton.com/chaco). It will take a while to sort that out, but in the meantime, I have photos in other locations:
mjh’s Chaco photos | 75 of 75
http://mjhinton.com/chaco/photos/fb.php/
Flickr: mjhinton’s photos tagged with chacocanyon
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/tags/chacocanyon/
Cibola County Beacon – News
Navajos to mark Chaco Canyon Centennial, By Diane Fowler, Beacon staff writer
CHACO CANYON – The Navajos of northwest New Mexico will observe the centennial anniversary of Chaco Canyon National Heritage Park Saturday by reminding the Dine of their historical place in that mystic canyon.
The gathering is not connected to the park or the National Park Service in any way, according to a spokeswoman for the event. She asked to remain anonymous, but was willing to share some of the details of the observance.
“We will focus on the history of the Navajo people in Chaco Canyon. It’s not a part of our history that is emphasized, but our people were forced to leave Chaco Canyon 100 years ago when it was made a national park,†she said.
“We lost our land and it was a tragic time for us,†she added.
The spokeswoman observed that currently most people think of Chaco Canyon as a national park and not as a place where people live, “The Navajo people still exist in the Chaco Canyon area,†she remarked.
The observance will include an address by San Juan County Commissioner Irving Chavez in support of the local community. Navajo Nation Vice-President Ben Shelly and other tribal leaders will also speak.
Tribal elders, who are familiar with the history of the canyon, will make a special appearance, along with Miss Indian Farmington. Traditional singing will provide entertainment and a potluck dinner will be served.
The event will be held on tribal land rather than the actual park site. Everyone is welcome to attend.
From highway 550, take county road 7800 to state route 57, then take a left on county road 7980 and look for a large tent.
The observance will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 25, 2007.
http://www.cibolabeacon.com/articles/2007/08/23/news/news1.txt
[hat tip to walkingraven]
NPR : Ancient Culture Prompts Worry for Arid Southwest, by Richard Harris
All Things Considered, July 9, 2007
Chaco Canyon is a stark and breathtaking ruin, nestled under soaring, red sandstone cliffs. [read or listen to this piece…]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11826985
Nicely-written meditative piece with some good imagery. If you enjoy it, be sure to see the second link for photos and more. peace, mjh
Dispatches From Kansas: Kachina at Chetro Ketl by Tom Parker
http://dispatchesfromkansas.blogspot.com/2007/06/kachina-at-chetro-ketl.html
http://dispatchesfromkansas.blogspot.com/
It must be serendipity that my alma mater, the University of Virginia, is creating a digital archive of research on Chaco Canyon, while my current school, the University of New Mexico, already has one of the best collections (housed on behalf of the National Park Service). mjh
The Chaco Digital Initiative is a collaborative effort
to create a digital archive that will integrate much of the widely dispersed archaeological data collected from Chaco Canyon in the late 1890s and the first half of the 20th century.
http://www.chacoarchive.org/
Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Home
http://www.unm.edu/~maxwell/home.html
ABQjournal: To Pave or Not to Pave; County OKs Study To Review Access to Chaco Canyon, By Leslie Linthicum, Journal Staff Writer
San Juan County commissioners have decided to spend $250,000 to study the effects of all options for the road into Chaco Canyon— everything from paving it to leaving it in its famously rutted condition.
The study is the latest turn in a heated debate about whether the last 13 miles of the county road leading to Chaco Culture National Historical Park should be paved. …
“From nothing all the way up to paving,” [San Juan County’s director of Public Works Dave Keck] said. “We’re basically going to let the (environmental assessment) document tell us where we should go.”
Keck said the process will examine how changes to the dirt road could affect archaeological and cultural resources as well as air quality and noise levels. The process will involve three public meetings.
“We’re not going to bowl over anybody in this project,” Keck said. “We’re going to let everybody be involved.”
Opponents are disappointed. They wanted the commission to drop the paving plan and make improvements to the road with fencing and maintenance.
“We believe that Chaco needs to be protected. We believe the road serves as a means of protection. And we believe that, if the road is paved, the essential character of the park will change,” said Anson Wright of the Chaco Alliance.
The Chaco Alliance, the San Juan Citizens Alliance and the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club support fencing the land along the roadway to keep livestock out, improving the wash that crosses the road, improving signs to control traffic and keeping the road graded.
Wright said the county’s original contention that the road is dangerous is unsupported.
“Yes, you have to drive more slowly. Maybe it’s an inconvenience. But that’s all,” Wright said.
A study prepared for Chaco in 2005 looked at the effects of paved access to national parks and monuments. Each park studied saw an increase in visitors following road improvements and some were dramatic. …
Park officials for Chaco have not taken a public stand on the paving issue, although they have said they fear the park’s resources would be strained by increased traffic, especially large tour buses.
STOP THE CHACO ROAD
http://www.dont-pave-chaco.com/
Albuquerque Archaeological Society
http://www.abqarchaeology.org/endangered.shtml
San Juan Citizens Alliance
http://www.sanjuancitizens.org/
I spent two nights and three days in Chaco Canyon recently. I keep a journal during my travels, which is a mix of the mundane and the inspired (when we’re lucky). Links to related sites are at the end. mjh
www.flickr.com
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CHACO CULTURE NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK— The park is proposing to raise its admission fees and wants public comments on the higher fee.
Admission to the park for private cars— regardless of the number of occupants— is currently $8. The park wants to raise that to $15. The park currently charges $4 admission per person for park visitors who enter the park on motorcycles or bicycles and proposes raising that fee to $8.
Park Superintendent Barbara West said the new fee would help the park repair and restore hiking trails and fund new museum exhibits.
“We believe the fee increase is a reasonable charge, is in keeping with rates at similar parks, and will greatly enhance visitor experience and address backlogged maintenance needs,” West said.
Comments on the fee proposal may be mailed to:
Barbara West
Chaco Culture National Historical Park
P. O. Box 220
Nageezi, New Mexico 87037
Fax
(505) 786-7061
The people who love Chaco don’t mind paying more. But nearly doubling the fee in one step is a shock. Take it to $10 immediately. Schedule an increase to $12 in 2010. This is too much, too soon. mjh
ABQjournal: No Oil Wells Near Chaco By Leslie Linthicum
State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons is pulling the plug on two oil wells proposed for just outside Chaco Canyon.
Lyons said Tuesday— after his office was peppered with complaints about allowing drilling so close to a national treasure— that his office will ask Cimarex Energy to trade for different parcels of state trust land.
If the company doesn’t want to trade, the Land Office will reject the application and refund the $10,000 that Cimarex paid for the leases.
“We have a moral obligation to maintain the integrity of Chaco Canyon,” Lyons said. [mjh: Send Lyons your love – PLyons@slo.state.nm.us 827-5760]
Cimarex had plans to drill two wells on state trust land about one mile beyond the southern boundary of Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The Land Office approved leases for the sites late last year and was in the process of reviewing archaeological studies before issuing final approval.
A Cimarex spokesman did not return phone calls from the Journal on Monday or Tuesday.
Lyons said he thought Cimarex would agree to transfer the lease to another area.
“I think they’re going to be receptive,” he said. If the company does not want to swap, he said, “they’re going to be fighting an uphill battle.”
Lyons said his office originally understood Cimarex, a Colorado energy company, planned to drill for natural gas. He said he learned Tuesday that the company planned to drill for oil, which would necessitate pump jacks that could be seen from inside the park.
Lyons said he wants to work with Chaco and other federal agencies that hold land around the park on a series of land trades that could build a no-development buffer around the park.
“We’ve got plenty of land,” Lyons said. “We don’t need to be right up against their boundary.”
That comes as welcome news to critics who complained that oil and gas exploration on the edge of the park would detract from the experience of visiting ancient Indian ruins.
Chaco is a World Heritage Site and its collection of pre-Puebloan ruins draws visitors from around the world to San Juan County.
“That’s terrific news. I’m glad to hear that,” said Mark Pearson, director of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, which had opposed the drilling.
Assistant Land Commissioner John Bemis said the office will begin to identify other tracts of state trust land where development might harm historical sites. The office could withdraw the tracts from leasing or trade the parcels to other agencies.
“Our preferred method is to exchange land and trade out of it because we don’t want these conflicts,” Bemis said.
Pearson praised the idea of building a buffer. “That sounds like a real positive long-term solution,” he said.
The goal of the Land Office is to make money from the land it holds in trust by approving leases for mineral extraction. Royalties from trust land— $495 million in the last fiscal year— support schools, hospitals, prisons and other public projects in New Mexico.
“Everyone agrees that the oil and gas industry plays a critical role in funding institutions and programs across the state,” Lyons said. “But we also agree that New Mexico has an extraordinary and unique history that must be protected and preserved.”
New Mexico State Land Office
P.O. Box 1148
Santa Fe, NM 87504-1148
Phone: (505) 827-5760
Fax: (505) 827-5766
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My Chaco site:
www.mjhinton.com/chaco/
ABQjournal: Around New Mexico
Repairs at Chaco Limit Campsites
Camping spaces are in short supply at Chaco Culture Historical Park as park employees make repairs to a septic system.
Chaco has suspended group camping at Gallo Campground and reduced regular campsites from 49 to 30 while it makes emergency repairs to the campground’s septic system and then makes plans to build a lift station to move sewage to the park’s main wastewater treatment center.
The restrictions are in effect at least until August and mean that no more than 100 people may camp at Chaco at a time.
[mjh: take note this cuts camping sites by 40 percent through the summer. If the CG is full, there is an overflow space that can be opened, but it has no facilities (though a great view of Fajada Butte).]
Where the Moon Stood Still, and the Ancients Watched – New York Times By MIRIAM HORN
Why did the Chaco people — the Anasazi, or “ancestral Puebloans,†as their descendants prefer — build an enormous ceremonial Great House at Chimney Rock, so far from home, 1,000 feet above the nearest water supply and at the base of immense sandstone spires?
It was not until two decades ago that archaeologists arrived at an explanation that most now accept: the Chaco people built the Great House as a lunar observatory precisely aligned to a celestial event that occurs just once in a generation.
That rare event, a “major lunar standstill,†is happening now, and continues through 2007. To witness this extraordinary moonrise, some two dozen visitors, including me, arrived to climb the Chimney Rock mesa in the middle of an August night.
Every 18.6 years, the moon does something strange: it radically expands the voyage it makes each month across the sky and, at the northern and southernmost edges of that journey, appears to rise in the same spot for two or three nights in a row.
[mjh: That same phenomenon figures into the famous Sun Dagger spiral on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon. I highly recommend you follow the link to this article which begins with a breath-taking photo by Helen L. Richardson and nicely balances the personal, the historical and scientific facets of this story. See also Chimney Rock Pueblo Outlier to Chaco Canyon (mjh)
]
My “quest†for the Guadalupe Outlier began years ago, when I first heard of an outlier along the Rio Puerco near Cabezon.
Independent – June 19, 2006: Area in Brief
CHACO CANYON — The National Park Service and the Friends of Native Cultures are co-sponsoring traditional Hopi singers and dancers at Chaco Culture National Historical Park on Wednesday, June 21, summer solstice. The Hopi singers will welcome the sun at Casa Rinconada at sunrise, followed by social dances in the plaza of Pueblo Bonito at 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Photographs of the dances will be allowed. The public is invited to attend and celebrate the beginning of summer. Information: (505) 786-7014.
New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon: A Place of Kings and Palaces?
BOULDER, Colo., June 5 (AScribe Newswire) — Kings living in palaces may have ruled New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon a thousand years ago, causing Pueblo people to reject the brawny, top-down politics in the centuries that followed, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder archaeologist.
University of Colorado Museum anthropology Curator Steve Lekson, who has studied Chaco Canyon for several decades, said one argument for royalty comes from the rich, crypt-style burials of two men discovered deep in a Chaco Canyon “great house” known as Pueblo Bonito several decades ago. They were interred about A.D. 1050 with a wealth of burial goods in Pueblo Bonito, a 600-room, four-story structure that was considered to be the center of the Chaco world, he said.
Archaeologists have long been in awe of the manpower required to build Chaco’s elaborate structures and road systems, which required laborious masonry work, extended excavation and the transport of staggering amounts of lumber from forests 50 miles distant, he said. The scale of the architecture and backbreaking work undertaken for several centuries suggests a powerful centralized authority, said Lekson, curator of anthropology at the University of Colorado Museum.
“I don’t think Chaco was a big happy barn-raising,” said Lekson, chief editor of “Archaeology Of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh Century Pueblo Regional Center
“Kingship” developed in Mesoamerica about 2,000 years before Chaco, Lekson said, and kings quickly became a constant on the political landscape. “It’s not remarkable that there were small-scale kings and states at Chaco in A.D. 1100,” he said. “What is remarkable is that it took the Southwest so long to get around to it.”
Located in northern New Mexico, Chaco Canyon was the hub of the Pueblo culture from about A.D. 850 to 1150 and is believed to have held political sway over an area twice the size of present-day Ohio. A center of ceremony and trade, the canyon is marked by 11 great houses oriented in solar, lunar and cardinal directions with roads that appear to have connected Chaco to outlying Pueblo communities.
Researchers have long pondered how Chaco rulers wielded control over outlying Pueblo communities in present day Utah, Arizona and Colorado, he said. Such “outliers,” located up to 150 miles away, would have required that visitors from Chaco walk up to eight days straight in order to reach them, said Lekson, who is also a CU-Boulder anthropology professor.
The answer may lie in the clarity of the Southwestern skies, the open landscape and the broad vistas that created an efficient “line-of-site” system, he said. “Chaco people could see Farview House at Mesa Verde, for example, and Farview could see Chaco,” he said. “I think similar linkages will be found between Chaco and the most distant outliers in all directions in the coming years.”‘
The roads, some as wide as four-lane highways, may have been used for ceremonial pilgrimages by priests and their followers, Lekson said. “They also could have been used by troops, tax collectors and inquisitors,” he said.
Funded by the National Park Service and CU-Boulder, the new book is a collaboration of more than 30 years of fieldwork by hundreds of researchers and students, many of whom participated in a massive NPS Chaco excavation from 1971 to 1982. Scores of academics met around the Southwest during the past several years, discussing the most recent research and latest theories regarding Chaco for the book.
The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon explores the natural environment and architecture, as well as Chaco’s economy, politics, history and regional influences. The authors also look at outside cultural influences from all directions, including ties to Mesoamerica, said Lekson. Twenty authors contributed to the book, including Lekson, CU Museum Director Linda Cordell, CU-Boulder anthropology doctoral student Derek Hamilton and Richard Wilshusen, who received his doctorate from CU-Boulder.
Lekson estimates that 95 percent of the Chaco people lived in small pueblos, while an elite 5 percent lived in the great houses. Pueblo Bonito and the other Chaco great houses were “tall, empty monuments” that could have been used for a variety of activities, from ceremonies and storage to inns and even slave cells, he said.
The culture’s architecture and settlement patterns changed dramatically in the region about 1300, when sites begin to look more like modern Pueblos.
“Chaco has been characterized in oral histories as a wonderful, awful place where people got power over other people,” Lekson said. “Later Pueblo cultures in the region did not develop from Chaco, but rather represent a reaction against it, with people distancing themselves from a bad experience.”
CONTACT: Steve Lekson, 303-492-6671, lekson@colorado.edu
