Kivas in East Plaza, Pueblo Bonito
It’s quite clear that, in a general sense, the modern Pueblo people of New Mexico and Arizona are the cultural descendants of the ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) groups of Chaco Canyon and other parts of the northern Southwest no longer occupied by people of Puebloan culture. Indeed, as the previous post explains, the descendants of the Chacoans are much easier to identify than those of pretty much any other prehistoric society in the Southwest. Nevertheless, the modern Pueblos are quite diverse in many ways. While they all have similar material culture, which is what most clearly shows their relationship to prehistoric sites like Chaco, the Pueblos speak six different languages belonging to four completely unrelated language families, and the linguistic divisions correspond generally (but not perfectly) to differences in other aspects of culture, such as kinship systems, sociopolitical structures, and religious practices.
With so much diversity, it’s reasonable to hypothesize that some modern Pueblo groups have closer connections to particular ancient sites than others. Demonstrating any specific connections has been frustratingly difficult for scholars so far, however. The immense upheavals of the Spanish colonial period led to significant changes in many Pueblos that make it difficult to trace their histories back into the prehistoric period, and archaeology has demonstrated considerable evidence for prehistoric upheavals that similarly obscure continuities of culture and population. Adding to the difficulty are the facts that the Pueblos have long had very similar material culture to each other, which makes it difficult to tell different ethnolinguistic groups apart archaeologically, and that the extensive migrations of the late prehistoric period seem to have involved rapid change in material culture as well, obscure whatever small differences had existed among different Pueblo groups.
On account of these difficulties, for a long time Southwestern archaeologists and anthropologists were often reluctant to try to reconstruct culture history in enough detail to connect specific ancient sites with specific modern Pueblos. In recent years this reluctance has decreased, however, and there is now a fair amount of interest in these questions, spurred in part by the requirements under NAGPRA for demonstrating cultural affiliation of modern groups in ancient sites. It’s interesting to compare this trend to the last period of considerable interest in this topic, which was similarly spurred by the effort in the 1950s to settle Indian land claims. In any case, archaeologists today have proposed various models of Southwestern prehistory to account for the distribution of modern Pueblo peoples.
With this context, and inspired in part by some interesting questions asked by commenter J. R. Barnett, I’ve decided to do a series of posts addressing this issue and the types of evidence available to address it. I’ll be focusing heavily on linguistic evidence, which is of particular interest to me personally as well as being of considerable importance in defining cultural differences among the Pueblos. I will, however, also discuss the evidence from archaeology, physical anthropology (including DNA studies), sociocultural anthropology, and oral traditions. In doing some reading on these topics recently, it’s been apparent that there really is quite a lot of relevant evidence out there. While we will surely never be able to recover every detail of the story, it’s worth taking a serious look at the available evidence to see what we can find out.
Apparent Kiva at Abo Pueblo, Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument
The submergence of the Mogollon culture into the Ancestral Pueblo of the 1200s foments some interesting research. And here’s a tidbit to throw in to your discussion: the universality of the flood myth within different cultures of the southwest. For example you can compare the story of “The Children’s Shrine” in the O’odham and the story of the children that became stone ears of corn on Towayalanne, the sacred mountain of the Zuni. One other I can’t resist: the word for house in both Hopi and O’odham is “ki”, I find that fascinating.
That’s a good point; while in this discussion I’ll be focusing mostly on connections the modern Pueblos have to the Anasazi, the Mogollon element is important too, and I think there was likely more of a Hohokam element than most people realize as well, especially at Zuni.
I think “ki” is the old Uto-Aztecan term for “house,” which would make its presence in both Hopi and O’odham a shared retention and not evidence for anything in particular about late prehistory. That said, there are some apparent loanwords from O’odham in Zuni (and vice versa), which are quite interesting indeed.
Looking forward to your posts on these matters!
Need info – was known in Chaco region “lime”? Was used in construction activities? Please informe. Thank you.
As far as I know lime was not used in the Chaco area for construction or anything else. Plastering was typically done with mud.
There has been some suggestion that the walls were covered in a light coat of white clay as a sort of paint. White House in Canyon de Chelly has been cited as an example but that room may have also originally an interior room. The routine painting of white on interior walls to lighten the rooms is a common belief and we have found some evidence of the practice.
That’s true, but that was still clay rather than lime. I don’t know of any evidence from the Southwest for the use of lime plaster as in parts of Mesoamerica.
Thank you for info. How ever in Mesoamerica a lime was part of construction , stucco. Due the remined of frescos on the walls of Theoticlan, writing? Was possible something of that nature in Chaco?
Well, there’s nothing at Chaco (or elsewhere in the Southwest) equivalent to the elaborate mural paintings of Mesoamerica, and certainly no writing, but as Marc said there is evidence for painting walls with white clay. There are also some examples of additional painting on top of the clay, most famously at Chetro Ketl, but this was generally limited to simple geometric designs. Some post-Chaco sites like Awatovi, Kuaua, and Pottery Mound had very elaborate murals in their kivas, but there’s nothing like that known for Chaco itself.
Thank you for replay. Planing to visit Chaco this year with international crew of agro archeology. Mystery for us is how people with limited means of construction planing be able build such a structures without planing and statistic calculations. Available petogrifs are very simple they reminiscence
“sprayers graffiti” on modern bridges today, not technical knowladge necessary to build structure as Pueblo Bonito etc. In Messa Verde is some wall imagery no?
That is indeed one of the biggest mysteries about Chaco. (And Mesa Verde is not significantly different with respect to any of these issues except that the architecture is less elaborate.) Clearly the Chacoans must have had substantial technical expertise to design and engineer such huge buildings so precisely, but how they developed and transmitted that knowledge is very unclear.
It is hard to believe that organization of such an enterprise as Chaco civitat was created by rather simple society as some today reaserchers trying to paint to the public. The elite of Chaco population must be mentaly intelectually far away from simple farmer connected to this day inhabitants of area. Chaco society has many social levels? It looks that elite did not survived so their knowledge. Are we wrong?
cehona,
To even begin to understand the potential complexity of Chaco you need to look at the modern pueblo people and their multi-faceted society. The interwoven nature of religion and life is fascinating and of course has lead to many anthropologists spending enormous amounts of time and energy attempting to understand and record the ceremonial, secular and social intricacies of the pueblo people. Unfortunately that puts the people being study into the position of living artifacts and can be quite unnerving to them if not downright rude.
I suggest you read something by the Tedlocks or “Zuni” the collected works of Cushing. You will begin then to have an understanding of just how complex life in Chaco may have been. Also realize the the “cities” of Chaco are only one manifestation of the lifestyle of the Ancestral Pueblo.
Marcaeolog
In many cases during our travels between sites of ancient civilization we observed that today inhabitants of said centers has nothing to do with events happened in the past. As you know agricultural achievements within 4 corners region was marveles, but who planed water Chanel’s? Who organized? What was a relation between ownership of properties and farmers? Who was so sofistcated to 12 hundred years ago, during crusader period in Europe on other site of the Earth build in desert miracle? Just question …. R.D. Fisher or K. Madden and others wrestling with this mystery as many more antrophologs and so far nothing. Chaco civilization is one of the big mystery.
Marc is right that the modern Pueblos are a lot more complex (and diverse) than they are often portrayed, but there has definitely been a lot of change since Chacoan times and the questions cehona is asking are among the important research issues on Chaco. There are a lot of archaeologists who would agree that Chacoan society was more “complex” (whatever that means) than the modern Pueblos, and that the transition from one to the other was complicated.
In any case, these are all fascinating questions, some of which I will be addressing in some of my upcoming posts on the connections between Chaco and the modern Pueblos.
Gentleman thank you for very interesting discussion about subject “phenomena” Chaco. Sorry for interruption.
I saw no interruption in this thread. Another excellent post teofilo.
Thanks, Marc. And thanks to cehona for stopping by to discuss these issues. Enjoy your visit to Chaco, and be sure to look at some of the previous posts on the blog if you haven’t already. I suspect you’ll find a lot of them interesting.