Southeast Corner of Pueblo Bonito
Today is the summer solstice, on which I typically make posts about archaeoastronomy, so I’m going to take a break from my very gradual series of posts on tracing the connections between ancient and modern Pueblos to speculate a bit about the role of astronomy at Chaco. Briefly, what I’m proposing is that the rise of Chaco as a regional center could have been due to it being the first place in the Southwest to develop detailed, precise knowledge of the movements of heavenly bodies (especially the sun and moon), which allowed Chacoan religious leaders to develop an elaborate ceremonial calendar with rituals that proved attractive enough to other groups in the region to give the canyon immense religious prestige. This would have drawn many people from the surrounding area to Chaco, either on short-term pilgrimages or permanently, which in turn would have given Chacoan political elites (who may or may not have been the same people as the religious leaders) the economic base to project political and/or military power throughout a large area, and cultural influence even further.
I don’t have any specific research papers to discuss on this topic because as far as I know no one has really looked at it quite this way. It’s similar in some respects to the theories of the Solstice Project, although I don’t buy that astronomical alignments were quite as important in the Chacoan system as they propose. There is also some overlap with the theories of various archaeologists, but none of them have put the pieces together in quite this way. This may be because it’s demonstrably wrong, but if it is I haven’t seen the evidence that disproves it yet (but would be very interesting in doing so).
This theory first occurred to me when I was reading about Tiwanaku in Bolivia, which was a prehistoric society that, like Chaco, left very impressive physical remains in a very isolated location with few obvious economic advantages. As I noted in my post on Tiwanaku, the similarities actually go well beyond that, extending also to the shifting interpretations by archaeologists and the evidence for astronomical alignments. Most relevant in this context is the theory of John Janusek at Vanderbilt, whose theory of Tiwanaku is the model for the theory I’m suggesting here for Chaco. As he wrote in one paper, which I also quoted in the earlier post:
Tiwanaku’s long rise to power in the Andean altiplano was predicated on the integration of diverse local ritual cults and various symbolic dimensions of the natural environment into a reasonably coherent, supremely elegant and powerfully predictive religion. The shifting physicality of Tiwanaku’s religious monuments attests the construction and ongoing transformation of an urban landscape that not only visually expressed the altiplano’s ‘natural’ forces and cycles, but, via recurring construction and ritual, simultaneously shaped new social practices and Tiwanaku’s ever-increasing political influence and productive coordination, intensification and expansion. Tiwanaku was an imperfect and potentially volatile integration of religious cults, productive enterprises and societies. The material objectification of a seductive religious ideology that infused the monumental centre with numinous natural forces and simultaneously projected those forces across distant Andean realms helped drive Tiwanaku’s very worldly imperial mission.
Tiwanaku was apparently the first society in the altiplano to develop the level of astronomical skill which allowed it to develop such a “powerfully predictive” religion, and my application of a similar theory to Chaco relies on it also being the first place that developed a comparable knowledge of astronomy in the Southwest. I hadn’t really thought about this before reading Janusek’s work, but as far as I can tell it does in fact seem to be the case. Ray Williamson’s somewhat dated but still very useful book on Native North American astronomy (which I reviewed here) doesn’t mention any evidence of Southwestern astronomical knowledge predating Chaco, and I haven’t seen any other publications that do either. Granted, some of the evidence for astronomical evidence comes from rock art which is difficult or impossible to date, but at least when it comes to building alignments, which are more securely datable, the Chacoan great houses seem to be the earliest manifestation of detailed astronomical knowledge. Some earlier sites do show general alignments to cardinal directions and so forth, but the precise alignments to solstices and lunar standstills that are characteristic of Chacoan buildings do really seem to be innovative. I’m not totally certain that there aren’t counterexamples out there, though, so if anyone knows of any I’m very interested in hearing about them.
If this is in fact the case, it opens up several additional lines of inquiry. First, if Chaco was in fact the first place in the (northern?) Southwest to attain detailed astronomical knowledge, where did that knowledge come from? Many discussions of Chacoan astronomy have assumed, implicitly or explicitly, that the answer is “Mexico,” but I’m not so sure. There is definitely extensive evidence of contact with Mesoamerica at Chaco, but it’s all fairly indirect and there are lots of important aspects of Mesoamerican culture that are noticeably lacking. Mesoamerican astronomical knowledge was certainly impressive, and certainly predates the rise of Chaco, but given the general context I think it’s still an open question whether the Chacoans got their knowledge from contacts to the south (either directly or via the Hohokam and/or Mogollon) or developed it independently. This is an area that would definitely benefit from further study.
Secondly, why Chaco rather than somewhere else in the region? This is sort of the key question hanging over everything about Chaco, and so far no one has come up with a broadly convincing answer. I don’t have one either; the astronomy theory I’m proposing here answers the “how” of Chaco but not the “why.” It could be that, as some archaeologists have proposed, the physical setting of the canyon had unique attributes within the region that contributed to its ritual importance from an early period, which from my perspective would have provided the impetus for the development and/or integration of new astronomical knowledge into existing belief systems. Alternatively, as other archaeologists have argued, there could have been economic advantages to the location, which are not obvious to modern eyes but were sufficient to give Chaco an important role in the region, which may have made it a promising place for new ideas to develop or be introduced. And finally, maybe it’s all just a matter of historical contingency: this was where people happened to figure this stuff out, and that’s what made it attractive to others for both religious and economic reasons.
Another question is when this would have happened. Chaco was occupied for hundreds of years, but its florescence as a regional center was relatively brief, lasting roughly a century from AD 1030 to 1130 or so. One natural conclusion would be that the development of new astronomical knowledge happened at the start of this period, but I suspect it actually began earlier, probably during the period (roughly the late ninth and tenth centuries, or the late Pueblo I period) when Chaco was just one of several “proto-great-house” communities in the San Juan Basin that were more or less equal in size and influence. Over time, the advantages of the Chacoan rituals over the others would have become apparent, perhaps through fortuitous stretches of good weather and/or military successes by Chacoan warriors. This would have set the stage for Chacoan influence to expand on a vast scale during the eleventh century.
As the reference to military success in the previous paragraph suggests, I don’t see the expansion of Chacoan religious influence fueled by astronomical knowledge as having necessarily been entirely peaceful. Here again, the parallel to Tiwanaku is instructive. Note Janusek’s reference to Tiwanaku’s “very worldly imperial mission” in the quote above. I suspect what we would today see as “religious” and “secular” impulses were much more intertwined at Chaco, as indeed they have been shown to be in many societies.
All that said, I’m not totally convinced by this theory myself, and there are many strands of the Chacoan record that it doesn’t really seem to account for in an obvious way. I figured this was a good opportunity to toss it out there, though, to see whether it’s worth pursuing further.
Janusek, J. (2006). The changing ‘nature’ of Tiwanaku religion and the rise of an Andean state World Archaeology, 38 (3), 469-492 DOI: 10.1080/00438240600813541
Gambler's House 
“The integration of diverse local ritual cults” could also possibly account for the variety of alignments in the great houses, with different houses belonging to different cults, or “clans”.
In an earlier post you mentioned LLekson’s theory that solstice alignments were regional but that cardinal alignments were a new development.
I could easily see an enterprising group of Mexican elites – in singular form, the Gambler of your title and the character of legend – bringing this powerful new knowledge up from the South and establishing this ceremonial center from the roots of an already existing traditional calendar. ..
Yeah, the part about the diversity of alignments was one thing that stood out to be about the possible relevance of this theory. And it’s certainly possible that some alignments/cults/astronomical practices were local and others were brought in from outside, but there are plenty of other possibilities too.
Teofilo great article as usually. It looks as prehistorical astronomy was major field of intellectual societies in all timelines of past civilization. There are many reasons why but it looks that astronomy is major tenant of basic human step to think and observe. Any idea why?
Thanks. I don’t really have a theory for why interest in astronomy has been so widespread among so many societies, but it certainly seems to have been the case.
It is quite plausible to me that astronomy is a litmus test for a larger intellectual community that was engaged in quality, empirical, proto-scientific inquiry that extended into many other domains, some of which may have provided economic and/or military advantage.
Also, Y1K, as I like to call it, was an auspicious time that shifted the power balance of human geography of the world.This time period coincided with the onset of the Medieval Warm Period (ca. 950 CE to 1250 CE).
It was the time that the Normans conquered England (expelled the Moors from Southern Italy), and that Malta became Europe’s only linguistically Afro-Asiatic territory. From about 1000 CE to 1099 CE, European Christians recaptured the Northern half of the Iberian Penninsula (as far as Toledo, 1985 CE) from the Moors in a process known as the Reconquista. In 1095 CE, the First Crusade was launched with the coordination of the Papacy, and by 1099 CE, five new Crusader states ruled by European Christian invaders, mostly from France and Italy, had been established in the Levant. (Of course, as I’ve set forth at greater length in a little footnote to this discussion, history tells us that the Crusader states ultimately collapsed in face of pressure from Muslim neighbors.)
It was the point at which most of what is now Islamic South Asia became Islamic It was the starting point of the Gypsy migration (possibly exiled in the face of Islamic conquest), and also close in time to the arrival of the Dravidian Brahui population near the Pakistan-Iran border from South Central India.
Turkish expansion reached its apogee in this century, bringing the Turkish language to Turkey and leaving a roughly 8% genetic contribution to Asia Minor.
The ethnogenesis of the Druze people, which may have involved a major migration as the Druze are quite genetically distinct from their neighbor (despite a community accepted tradition that the sects origins are not ethnic and drew adherents from many ethnicities) took place from 1014 CE to 1043 CE (when evangelism to gain new members was prohibited). This may have been flight from Turkish expansion.
It was the climax of the Uralic monarchy in Hungary that just went native (converting to Christianity) at that point (possibly an expansion driven by Turks at their tails). And, there was a Thule (i.e. proto-Inuit) wave of migration from Siberia to circumpolar North America, that was possibly an outgrowth of a culture that was also the source of the Uralic language family around 500 CE to 1000 CE.
The rise of Chaco is roughly coincident with the rise of the Cahokia based Mississippian culture (which despite its name apparently reached at least as far as the Atlantic Coast of North Carolina in culture and trade influence).
Around 1000 C.E. was the mass migration of the Na-Dene people from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest to the American Southwest. This may have been driven by a Thule push and a power vacuum in the Southwest. From the South, the Utes replaced the Fremont people in the Southwest (perhaps in the wake of Mayan collapse ca. 950 CE).
And, of course, no Y1K recounting would be complete without mentioning that Viking’s settled Iceland and then Lief Erikson brought Europeans to North American in the Vinland settlement, briefly. In China, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period following the collapse of the Tang Dynasty, gave way to the Song Dynasty in this time period. The Austronesians peaked at this point to the extremes of Madagascar, Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand.
Chaco may have been an American Southwest manifestation of the spirit of that age worldwide, driven perhaps mostly by changes in culture that made old regimes maladaptive and favored new ones or move climate niches favorable to existing cultures to new locations.
Yeah, I’ve always been fascinated by how much stuff was going on around that time. Thanks for that great list, which includes a few developments that I was unaware of (and a couple that I would quibble with the dating of, but no matter). I feel like some sort of climatic explanation makes the most sense for so much innovative activity in so many widely dispersed areas, although in some cases they may of course have been related in various ways.
A few more Y1K events for completeness in African and Southern and MesoAmerica. It was near the high point of the geoglyph creating culture of Acre, Brazil (half a millenium after the Nazca Line culture of Peru), it was in the middle of the story of the Cañari people of Ecuador, and was at the very tail end of Bantu penetration into Southern Africa more or less ending Bantu expansion. This time period is also hypothesized as a moment of Dogon ethnogenesis as relict African traditional religion practitioners converged on defensible cliff dwelling areas along the Niger River in Mali at the heels of Islamization to the North. While some claims about Dogon astronomy are probably exaggerated, there is no doubt that astronomy is an important part of their culture.
Also, some key event for astronomers of the time were the 4 July 1054 CE Supernova that created the Crab Nebula, another brighter supernova visible to the naked eye in 1006 CE, and the passing of Halley’s Comet in 1066.