Systemic Nesting Among the Anasazi: Ad 900-1140

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2004

SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140

Carl G. Drexler

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Drexler, Carl G., "SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140" (2004). Nebraska Anthropologist. 63. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebanthro/63

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Carl G. Drexler

Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have proposed a number ofmodels and hypotheses to explain the growth andfluorescence ofthe Anasazi system based in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. This paper gives an overview ofsome of those models, then explores how World System Theory (WSJ) might be used to understand the social and economic processes at work during the pinnacle ofsettlement in Chaco Canyon.

Introduction cultures and subcultures. The Anasazi are the best known of these, and their Since its rise in the 1970's, great houses at Mesa Verde and Chaco World Systems Theory has spawned a Canyon draw throngs of visitors every number of research topics and concepts year. The peculiarity of the Anasazi, in that facilitate new ways of understanding that they created these large sites with old foci of archaeological scholarship. complex masonry and carefully One of these foci is the finely detailed calculated plans, has led to the analysis of the structure of sites within a development of the Chaco-based given culture or, under the World elements of the Anasazi to be termed the Systems unit of analysis, world. Rarely "Chaco Phenomenon," as it is without in archaeology is the clean parallel in the region. This core/periphery/semiperiphery "phenomenon" offers perhaps the best organization of a world apparent, as potential for the application of a World close study introduces vagaries into our Systems viewpoint. understandings ofthese terms. One part There is one problem with this of Robert Jeske's (1999) study of the area though, which happens to be an Mississippian world at the time when outgrowth of its scale and popularity. Cahokia was flourishing is the nesting of Chaco has been such a widely studied peripheries within the world. This paper culture area that a proliferation of addresses the topic of peripheral nesting theories pertaining to its social in the context of the Anasazi, the organization, systemic functioning, and prehistoric residents of northern Arizona level of complexity has resulted in a and New Mexico, whose locus of power morass of theory. Various authors have lay between the steep sandstone walls of interpreted Chaco as being a state, a Chaco Canyon. center with only limited local power and Chaco is particularly well-suited negotiated power with its outliers for this study as it is, along with (Durand and Durand 2000:101), and as Cahokia, one of the very few instances the center of a wide network of outlier where a complex, stratified society arose communities over which it exerted a in prehistoric North America outside of measure of coercive power and the Mayan and Aztec cultures to the expanded to gain control of desirable south. Perhaps the most romanticized of resources (Neitzel 1994:215). My American archaeological areas, the understanding of Chaco falls somewhere Southwest was home to a wide variety of in the neighborhood of the last of these

The Nebraska Anthropologist, vol. 19,2004, pp. 46-60 46 [Drexler] SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140 47 three interpretations, but, in order to men working for only a month or two validate that assertion, an understanding per year could have built the largest of of the Chacoan World must first be the additions to Pueblo Bonito (Lekson established. 1984:64), but would not a specially trained individual have to have the Pico Chaco knowledge to direct the construction of Some archaeologists look at the room blocks five layers deep and four Chaco an system and see a connected tall? Would an egalitarian community group of residence clusters that focus have been likely to organize the themselves around the local great house. shipment of215,000 trees to the Canyon The great house, under this construct, is for use in great house construction? not an elite residence but a communal These seem improbable, particularly ceremonial structure. Whatever level of when added to the wealth of data that political complexity the group has suggest Chaco experienced a level of developed produced a small cadre of wealth disproportionately large in elites that operated virtually without comparison to the rest of the system. authoritarian influence from the major Other factors, including the towns in Chaco Canyon. Rather, through wealth of burials in Chaco Canyon, the emulation, the architecture of the local possibility of institutional, class great houses appears to be similar to the reinforcing cannibalism (Turner masonry styles and floor plans ofthe 1993:421-439), and the greater variety central great houses (Durand and Durand and number of foreign trade items in 2000: 109). While they do not eschew the Chaco Canyon indicate that the Anasazi notion that Chaco held some ritual who lived in that canyon had a importance within the system, they tend significant amount of political and social to avoid the assertion that and group of power over the surrounding groups central elites held decision-making power within the world system. The Emergence of a Regional System Grande Chaco in the New Mexico Desert Other archaeologists, perhaps the majority of them, prefer the notion that There are many ways of looking Chaco was a system whose political at the growth of Chaco and the Anasazi, power was largely centered in Chaco more than can be adequately dealt with Canyon. The elites that wielded that in a hundred papers of this length. One power had decision-making rights that way that allows for a quick extended over a large portion of the understanding of Anasazi growth and the system, if not the entire system itself expansion of Chacoan power is, when (Lekson 1999:26). They point to the elite used as a proxy, architecture. The burials found at Pueblo Bonito, the sheer database on Chacoan architecture is such scale of the various construction projects that it can either be dealt with in the throughout the system, and the clear minutiae, or on a macroscopic level, architectural and engineering skill focusing on the most easily required to produce much of the built differentiated attributes of the sites environment as good evidence for this within the Anasazi-dominated parts of complexity. Granted, teams of thirty Arizona and New Mexico. 48 THE NEBRASKA ANTHROPOLOGIST [vol. 19,2004]

occupied them lived in round pithouses before beginning to build pueblos. The Site Stratification round activity area is, then, a survival from earlier times. Most architectural studies of Anasazi architecture are divided into Growth ofa System three parts, large great houses, great houses (or towns), and villages. Large In The Chaco Anasazi, one of great houses (also spoken of as large Lynn Sebastian's foci of study is the towns), are found exclusively in Chaco point at which a culture group transitions Canyon, and number between 215 rooms from egalitarian to complex (Sebastian at Penasco Blanco (Schelberg 1984:11) 1992). The study of Chacoan and the immense Pueblo Bonito, which architecture, focusing on the early had at least 695 (Schelberg 1984: 16-17). phases of development in the Canyon, There are only four sites that merit this reflects this change well. By studying category, three of which, Pueblo Bonito, the changing layout of the large great Penasco Blanco, and Chechro Ketl, are houses and the inception of outliers, we in Chaco Canyon. The last, Aztec Ruin, can plot them diachronically, and lies to the north. thereby watch the growth and Great houses are found within proliferation of the Chacoan system. Chaco canyon itself and in as many as The great houses in Chaco 150 "outlier" communities throughout Canyon did not start off as large the region. These great houses range in residences, home to elites who exerted size from over 100 rooms to a dozen or the kind of power they probably enjoyed so (Schelberg 1984:14). They may have in the 12th and 13th centuries. The first a plaza or great kiva associated with building stages at future large great them and may be associated with a houses resulted in room blocks not much segment of one of the many roads built larger than some of the other pueblos in by the Anasazi to connect settlements. the area. The Anasazi village was At the end of the Basketmaker III predominated by what archaeologists period, around AD 750, most inhabitants have dubbed the "unit pueblo" of the San Juan Basin lived a primarily (Schelberg 1984:14). These are mobile life, living in pithouses and irregularly planned assortments of single cultivating only a few plants per year. story rooms, usually five or six in The transition to a more sedentary way number. A kiva is usually present as oflife began somewhere around AD 850 well. It is important to note that the term (Neitzel 1994:219), resulting in a series "kiva" has been de-ritualized in of masonry pueblo construction events archaeological discussion, as the term throughout the central New Mexico area. itself references ethnographic kivas These were primarily agrarian sites that among the Hopi, which carried had yet to be brought together into a important spiritual significance. Many world system. archaeologists (for example, Lekson Though the area was inhabited 1999:24) see kivas as nothing more than by agriculturalists, the ease of farming an activity space that happens to be in a was not uniform throughout the region . round shape because the people who . Chaco Canyon was a relatively poor [Drexler] SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140 49 location agriculturally, one that could Chacoan architecture (Lekson 1984), a not support a large community. Rainfall five-phase approach will be used here. there averages less than nine inches per Phase I, which lasted from AD 900 to year. When it does come, it usually does 940, was the first period in which great so in the form of desultory July storms house construction occurred in the that can do as much or more damage to a valley. Pueblo Bonito, Una Vida, and field than the preceding lack of Penasco Blanco were established as precipitation. Indeed, the water control focal sites for three clusters of features found in the Anasazi area seem contemporary villages, probably with a to be more focused on controlling the view towards food redistribution as a damage of the periodic superabundance hedge against drought, and also as places of water than evenly distributing the that offered good communication flow little flowing water in the area. The between the great houses and the growing season in the canyon is short, emergent system of outliers. somewhere around 100 days between the These three pueblos are built at final thaw and the first frost Soils tend points in Chaco Wash that allow access to have a rather high acid content, which to the land outside of the canyon. Pueblo can stunt plant growth, including corn Bonito is built across the canyon from (Sebastian 1992:9-12). South Gap, a break in the tall canyon It would seem odd that such a walls, Penasco Blanco at the junction of massive system of large pueblos should the Escaveda and Chaco Washes, and, arise in such an arid, inhospitable place. finally, Una Vida is built at the point However, it may just be that the where Fajada Canyon merges with difficulty of growing crops produced the Chaco Canyon. societal complexity that resulted in such The system of outlier large architectural projects. Faced with communities consisted of eighteen sites any sort of population growth, that have been identified as expressing communalizing in order to share food Chacoan architectural styles appropriate resources would be an adaptive response to that time period. These sites are noted to climatic hardship. Apparently, this is because they had great houses what was taking place in Chaco Canyon constructed with core and veneer style in the early 10th century. walls, were of similar floor plan, some had great kivas, and had 15 to 20 rooms Phase I (Early Pueblo II) in the great house (Neitzel 217). It is important to note that the term "outlier" Archaeologists are fond of their does not apply just to the great house or phases. There is an overarching time the complex of larger buildings found at schedule for the entire Southwest, the a given site, but applies rather to a Pecos Classification, and there are many clearly spatially bounded area wherein more site or culture-specific the settlements express certain chronologies. Chaco is no exception. architectural and functional attributes Lekson (1984), as well as others, divide (Doyel et al. 1984:37). The outliers of Chacoan prehistory into 5 phases, others Chaco, at this point in its history, seem use 3. For the sake of continuity with to lump spatially into two groups. One one of the more straightforward group is within 50 miles of Chaco, the interpretations of the development of other is closer to 100 miles away. This 50 THE NEBRASKA ANTHROPOLOGIST [vol. 19, 2004J

would support Doyel's "Chaco Halo" labor to build great houses, is controlling model, to which we will return later. the flow of goods into and out of Chaco, Between this phase and the next, and supports several groups of elites. which began in AD 1020, geographical The suggestion has been made expansion of the system seems to be that the political power of the valley was minimal. Neitzel (1994:219) states that not concentrated in the hands of a single this is a period when most expansion elite or elite lineage. If one person was done within the pre-existing system, wielded power, one would guess that developing local networks and architectural work would be focused on establishing new local villages rather the primary residence of the elite. The than add territory to the system. fact that Chechro Ketl was begun while Pueblo Bonito was being expanded and Phase II (Late Pueblo II) Una Vida, Penasco Blanco, and Pueblo Alto were occupied or being built Between 1020 and 1050, not only suggests that there were numerous was Pueblo Bonito expanded in size to powerful groups in the valley, perhaps over 200 rooms, numerous other each stemming from the earlier period buildings were begun, including Pueblo where the three great houses seemed to Alto and Chechro Ketl. What is dominate individual minisystems. significant about these two new great Outlier construction at this time houses is that they are not located in greatly expanded the number of great areas that command some resource houses within the previous bounds of the beneficial to communalized agriculture. system, though the expansion of the Chechro Ketl stands close to Pueblo system itself was relatively small Bonito, and, if the inhabitants were (Neitzel 1994:220). The number of intending solely to organize labor, the outliers within the system increased competition between Pueblo Bonito and threefold, however, indicating that a Chechro Ketl would have been much larger population came under disadvantageous. It would seem more Chacoan influence during this time. likely that the construction of Chechro Ketl is indicative of multiple big men or women residing in different great Phase III (Early Pueblo III) houses, sharing political power in some way. The next major period of Pueblo Alto, on the other hand, construction at Chaco occurred between while it is not even in the canyon, but on 1050 and 1075. Most of this work seems the escarpment that bounds Chaco to have been focused on expansion of Canyon on the north, is away from the the current great houses, though Pueblo other great houses. Lekson (1984:60) del Arroyo, situated near Pueblo Bonito identifies both it and Chechro Ketl as and Chechro Ketl, was begun. What is elite residences. If this is true, it would important to note, however, is that the indicate that social structure has gone increase in living space far outpaces the from an orientation towards providing estimated 3% per year population food for the community towards a increase (Lekson 1984). Provided that system with an established hierarchy that the rooms identified as residences were has the power to plan, if not coerce the occupied at this time, it appears that [Drexler] SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140 51 people were moving to Chaco Canyon, persuasive bits of evidence for social as birth rate alone is insufficient to fill complexity among the Anasazi. These the increase in population estimates. roads, usually around 9 meters wide, connected outlying communities with each other and with Chaco itself. They Phase IV (Early Pueblo III) ran for hundreds of miles, over mountains (not around them), and The busiest construction phase at seemed to be built for both economic Chaco was between 1075 and 1115. and ritual purposes. In order for these Pueblo Bonito, Penasco Blanco, and roads to be constructed over such a great Pueblo del Arroyo were greatly distance and as straight as they often increased in size, and Wijiji, at the were, bespeaks a knowledge of eastern end of the Canyon, had begun. surveying techniques and labor Much of the expansion work resulted in organization that would be improbable large amounts of storage space. It would in an egalitarian community. appear that the great houses were assuming a much more important The McElmo Phase . economic role within the Anasazi world than they had heretofore (Lekson The final phase of great house 1984:66). construction was the so-called McElmo Again, outlier construction was Phase, between 1115 and 1140. Some focused primarily within the bounds of say that McElmo Phase sites are the Chaco system, though those evidence of intrusion from the San Juan boundaries did move outwards during area to the north, noting the change to this time (Neitzel 1994:219). By now, more compact floor plans and the use of outliers could be found as far north as larger, blockier stone instead of the slab the southern boundary of the Rocky sandstone used prior to this. Lekson and Mountains, as far south as the Mogollon others disagree with the concept of San Rim, as far west as the Anasazi culture Juan influence, offering instead that the spread, and as far east as the Puerco changes in style were the result of the River. One interesting trend worth exhaustion of building stone resources in mentioning is that great houses tended to the canyon itself. By building more become larger at greater distance from rectangular floor plans, the number of Chaco. Lekson interprets this as walls that had to be constructed to make evidence of the ceremonial importance rooms was significantly decreased, and a of Chaco, as people closer to the Canyon shift in building stone type and style would be more likely to attend exploited other local rock types. Kin ceremonial functions there, whereas Kletso is an example of a site of those at great distance would go to one McElmo construction. of the several large great houses, which Whatever the cause, the McElmo could perform the same ceremonial Phase, many assert, was the beginning of function but be nearer at hand. the end of Chaco (Judge 1983). The This is also the first period when entire valley was deserted by the dawn archaeologists are sure road construction of the 13th century, and the number of was under way (Powers et al. 1983:253). great houses displaying Chaco-like These thoroughfares are one of the most characteristics declined dramatically 52 . THE NEBRASKA ANTHROPOLOGIST [vol. 19,2004) both during this phase and after it. interacted based upon the ability to Lekson's Chaco Meridian asserts that communicate. the locus of power shifted north to There are two fundamental Aztec, then south to Paquime. The problems with this approach. First, the likelihood that this happened is Southwest is not a nice, even, level somewhat in question, but the basic surface. A circle is not an appropriate point is that it was no longer at Chaco. shape to describe all the area around a By 1300, only five communities within site that may be accessed through a walk the canyon have been documented as of a given amount of time. This problem still inhabited (Powers et al. 1983:258). may currently be rectified, however, by This same process rippled throughout the use of advances Geographic the Southwest in the following century, Information System software such as the as lands and villages that had been . ArcGIS suite. These programs may be occupied for several centuries were used to draw a shape over uneven terrain abandoned. By the mid-1300's, much of that much more faithfully represents the the Four Comers area, which included actual distance from a site that could be many sites occupied by the Anasazi, was covered. virtually depopulated, with peoples of A second objection, one that is different groups moving throughout the not so easily overcome, is that Graph area, eventually forming a mixture of Theory doesn't delve into actual site cultures that gave rise to the Hopi. hierarchy structuring very well, and does not work well with economic, political, Theoretical Background and cultural considerations. It's most reliable results are demonstrations of Attempts to model the structure potential interconnectedness, which are of community interactions did not begin not as useful to describing the totality of with World Systems Theory (WST). interactions between peoples. Before focusing on the neo-Marxist Another theory, Central-Place underpinnings ofWST, let us first look Theory, is similarly tied to geography. at the use of two alternative theories, Central place theory does a better job Graph Theory and Central-Place Theory. than Graph Theory as far as handling Graph Theory essentially uses a system-wide site structuring. Central map and a compass to try and link sites Place Theory assumes that the largest according to distance. If an archaeologist order of sites within a ranked site size has an algorithm for how far a person hierarchy will be distributed fairly could walk in a day, a week, or a year, evenly around the territory of a given she can, on a map, plot a circle around a group. Around these sites will cluster a site that illustrates how many other number of second order sites, each of communities the site could interact with which has a halo of third order satellite on different levels. By showing overlap communities. Goods flow between sites within these areas, a general idea for of similar size rank within their own interconnectedness of sites may develop. nodes, and then are dispersed to lower Wilcox (1996) provides us with a map levels (Wilcox 1996). that shows how different communities Central-Place Theory answers within the Southwest may have many of the economic, political, and structural questions that Graph Theory [Drexler] SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140 53 does not address so well. However, the affiliation. As the system expands, applicability to the Southwest is however, more cultures become part of somewhat problematical, as, once again, it, creating a world system, either a the Southwest, the area dominated by the world empire, wherein the cultures are Anasazi in particular, is not flat. Central united under one political aegis, or a Place Theory was developed to explain world economy, where they are not site dispersal in southern Germany, (Wallerstein 2000b:75). World empires, which has comparatively little relief. The according to Wallerstein, emerge first, as model, therefore, should and does work economies are generally unstable at well there. In places that offer more inception, and, provided they do not significant topographical considerations disintegrate, are more easily created in a to site placement, another theoretical world empire, which unites power long approach would be more appropriate. In enough for the various cultures to this case, World Systems Theory offers a develop their economies to make the better alternative. world economy viable after that single The year 1974 witnessed the political power disintegrates publication of the seminal work within (Wallerstein 2000b:75). the World Systems canon, Immanuel Perhaps one of the greatest Wallerstein's The Modern World blessings of WST is that it is the first System. This work, an outgrowth of neo theory that deals with a wide range of Marxist thought, expounded a number of complex subjects that also holds the concepts that were fundamentally potential for cross-discipline research. different from the way sociological Using this theory has allowed study was done heretofore. Perhaps the· sociologists, anthropologists, most revolutionary was the use of the geographers, and historians to speak to "World-System" as the fundamental unit each other using the same language, of analysis. The world system has been helping to deconstruct the divisive, defined as the area within which the arguably unnecessary barriers between people share some division of labor that different academic departments. allows them to regularly reproduce the system and themselves (Wallerstein 2000a: 139). Within this region, people World Systems Theory in the and areas are divided first into the core American Southwest and periphery, with the semiperiphery emerging as an intermediate, almost a Though Chaco seems like the buffer, that mediates the flow of goods, best candidate or a World Systems-based both material and ideological, between analysis the prehistoric Southwest may the two (Wallerstein 2000b:89). Though offer, surprisingly little research has the semiperiphery is not an essential part been done in this direction. A few of the system, it does greatly assist in the authors have made some inroads using smooth running of it. neo-Marxist models, however, and these The development of world must be mentioned. systems, according to Wallerstein, began . Steadman Upham's 1982 Polities small, naturally enough. The first and Power is an attempt to reconstruct systems to appear were minisystems, post-Contact Hopi social organization in systems that shared the same cultural an explicitly World Systems framework. 54 THE NEBRASKA ANTHROPOLOGIST [vol. 19,2004]

The Hopi, who are a derivative group of Systems viewpoint without the Anasazi and other cultures in the acknowledging it is Steven Lekson' s region, were one of the groups contacted Chaco Meridian. Lekson's model talks and subjugated by the Spanish in their about peripheral sites, "outliers," and conquest of the area. their relationships to centers (instead of Polities and Power uses WST in "cores") at Chaco, Aztec, and Casas form, but not in terminology, as several Grandes. While not overtly World other adaptations of WST to pre and Systems oriented, Lekson's model offers non-capitalist situations have done. It several helpful insights which will serve takes issue with Wallerstein's definition well a WST model, and will be dealt of culture, form and functions of trade, with later. and a number of other criticisms often Several World Systemic models lodged against doctrinal WST. have been offered that focus to some Upham's work is one of the best extent directly on Chaco itself. Gledhill examples of WST-related scholarship in (1978) and McGuire (1986) both the Southwest, but there are certain interpret Chaco as expressing a prestige hurdles to adapting his model to Chaco. goods economy that reflects competition First, the data sources are different. For among ranked lineages of elites living Upham, working with a proto-historic the large pueblos in Chaco Canyon. setting, there is some written record While they make good points, the pertinent to his topic that gives the fundamental problem with their prestige opportunity to see some approximation goods economy is that they focus too of a contemporary viewpoint and heavily on the function of preciosities, interpretation of events. For Chaco, ignoring the important social power of however, where all we have to go on is trading in bulk goods. Under the terms archaeological data, the surety with of the social contract, the elites remain in which a WST-based model may be power because they see to it that the attempted is much less. commoners are supplied with basic Secondly, and much more wants, including foodstuffs. In order for importantly, modem Hopi political a prestige-goods model to work, it must organization is much more similar to be accompanied with adequate exchange Hopi organization at contact than of foods to keep the populace backing Anasazi organization during the period the elites: Esoteric knowledge and of Chaco an fluorescence. Chaco exclusive access to a single suite of exhibited a higher level of social goods are not enough to maintain a stratification and complexity than do social structure. modem Hopi peoples, meaning that a Dean Saitta looks at Chaco with model built from ethnographic analogy, a neo-Marxist angle, too. In his 1997 as many have been and are, miss the article in American Antiquity, he gives a mark. Understanding Chacoan good synopsis of different theories sociopolitical organization requires relating to Chacoan political models that look to other sources for organization, and offers his own model, analogy, if not a completely novel which is primarily a prestige-goods understanding. model. His is more palatable, however, A discussion of Chaco that because it gives agency to the comes tantalizingly close to a World vernacular. Whereas Gledhill and [Drexler] . SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140 55

McGuire focus so heavily on the role of applications to the Chaco Anasazi. It is elites within the society as to make the now time to address the issue of commoner appear as but a cog in the Chacoan site structure from a World machine, Saitta looks at prestige goods Systems viewpoint. The study of as the result of service to the community. Anasazi architecture indicates that the A prestige good is conceptualized here Chaco an system consisted of a core and as a reward earned by the elite by a nested set of peripheries. satisfying the wants of the populace, and A core with nested peripheries is not entitled to it regardless of his expresses several different effectiveness (Saitta 1997: 19). understandings of "coreness" all at once. One final work that needs to be A core may interact differently with its mentioned is that of Pailes and immediate group of satellite sites than it Whitecotton (1986). Their work brought does with farther flung peripheries. Also, World Systems to the old Southwestern the major center and surrounding debate over the origin of the social villages can be considered a core in complexity witnessed at Chaco. They relation to other sites within the system, employed WST to back the now rather and interact with them differently. unpopular assertion that groups of long range traders from Mesoamerica, known The Local Pattern: Chaco and Its Halo as Pochtecas, settled in Chaco and founded the hierarchical society The spatially smallest application reflected in the construction of large of a world systems model is within the great houses. To enter fully into this Chaco Halo, introduced by David Doyel, debate would tax the reader's attention Cory Breternitz, and Michael Marshall beyond polite boundaries, so this work is (1984). Doyel et al. focus on the only mentioned here as an illustration of importance of the proximity to Chaco the range of application WST has and the effect it had on community experienced within Chacoan-themed organization. They note that where there debates. is a great house, it is usually rather These are some of the explicitly small, and, in many cases, there is none, WST-based works that have been though the sites that lack great houses published on the subject of Chaco to seem to be near or astride one of the date to date. Using them as a basis for many roads that runs into Chaco canyon. understanding will make applying a These sites were likely the homes of the WST-based model to questions of agriculturalists and laborers who built Chacoan emergence and systemic· Chaco and supplied it with enough food nesting much simpler. to keep it running (Doyel et al. 1984:49). These communities date to the mid to late Bonito Phase, 1020-1220, and are The Chacoan World likely indicative of the growth of population in Chaco Canyon and the Thus far, a brief synopsis of resultant need to feed them. The power changes in Chacoan building styles, both of Chaco within this halo was within and without the canyon, has been redistributive and complex. offered along with a brief background in In World Systems terminology, World Systems and its various previous the great houses within the canyon were 56 THE NEBRASKA ANTHROPOLOGIST [vol. 19, 2004J the core area that dominated the importance of the Vatican and the peripheral Halo sites. Provided Doyel et Pontiff. al.'s work at Bis Sa'ani correctly Whatever the nature of the ties illustrates the relationship between that between Chaco and the surrounding ring community and Chaco, then the of sites were, the outliers were tightly peripheral sites were sending food to the bound to the fortunes and decisions of core for redistribution. Their labor was the inhabitants of the great houses, being used to feed the elite populations. among whom Pueblo Bonito seems to The flow of goods from the core to the have come to supremacy. periphery was either through food redistribution in times of want, or The Regional Pattern: Chaco and Its through ritual means. Outliers As was noted above, the relative Past a certain distance, the dearth of highly formalized, large outlier redistributive processes that Chaco great houses within this Halo, which maintained within the Halo become extends approximately 35 kilometers uneconomical. The cost in food away from Chaco in a roughly circular consumed to carry a load of sustenance layout, indicates a political domination to Chaco becomes greater than the value of the periphery by the core. The of the vittles carted in. Past that point, functions of the great house, as either the the nature of relations between Chaco home of some form of legislative elite or and outlying great houses changes as a communal ritual center, were tied up dramatically. in the canyon itself, and effectively Assuming that outlying great bound the near outlying communities to houses are the product of the spread of it. I should note here that in all fairness, Chacoan power and not local this is not necessarily such a harsh thing. developments undertaken through By saying the core established this competitive emulation, the elites in relationship robs the periphery of Chaco would have maintained a certain agency, which may well be unfair. The level of power over the lesser elites periphery, once included in the core's residing at the outlying great houses. As system, could have been part of a the distance from Chaco increases, ceremonial or religious system that however, and the lines of prized the great houses in Chaco Canyon communication stretch, the importance for some great spiritual significance. If of the local elite and the amount of this were the case, the periphery would power that he or she may wield should have the benefit of visiting these grow. Perhaps this is reflected in the spiritual sites directly, instead of being increase in size of great houses as bound to a great house at a distant distances from the core increase. outlier. An analogy to this might be the This is not to say that the elites in difference between hearing a mass Chaco lacked the ability to reinforce and performed by the Pope in Rome versus exert power over those at great hearing it from a local curate. While the distances. Within the archaeology of the rites may be virtually the same, the prehistoric Southwest, there is a growing experience of the former is much more body of literature that suggests there dramatic and exhilarating because of the might have been some form of annual festival in Chaco that integrated peoples [Drexler] SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140 57 from throughout the Anasazi world. closer peoples, the Mogollon, Hohokam, Large deposits of intentionally broken and Sinagua. pottery at places like Pueblo Alto and Anasazi interactions with the just outside of Pueblo Bonito could be Sinagua might be a fruitful area of the remnants of some sort of ritual that research for future scholars in that the involved offering food or "killing" site of Wupatki expresses both Sinaguan pottery as a sacrifice. Also, the road and Anasazi architectural and artifactual segments built by the Anasazi traits.· Parts of Wupatki appear to be throughout the Chacoan World become Chacoan style core and veneer masonry, noticeably wider as they near Chaco. If enough so that Lekson (1999) includes part of the importance of roads was the Wupatki in his list of outliers. Looking movement of people towards the Canyon from the other end Wilcox (1996:247) for an annual festival, the increase in and a number of others think that while traffic as one neared the canyon would Wupatki might not have been an outlier, make a widening of the roads a desirable it could have been a gateway site that development. This is at this point allowed for fairly open trade between the conj ecture, as there does not appear to be Anasazi and Sinagua. A closer study of a supporting body of fieldwork to verify Chacoan border dynamics might be this last claim. fruitful. That aside, it has been The Macro-Regional Pattern: Chaco documented that the trade with other and the Wider World regions was not one-dimensional. Perhaps the most thoroughly researched The final stage of this nested and frequently encountered export from system considers the Anasazi, as a the Anasazi was turquoise, which group, as a core that consumed goods permeated the Southwest and reached from the neighboring peoples and was Mesoamerica. One of the first involved in regularized trade with identifiable outliers to the Chacoan groups as far away as Mesoamerica. system is Guadalupe Ruin, situated at Many of the power issues some distance on the Rio Puerco. The inherent to World Systems Theory break early inclusion of this site in the system down in an attempt to accurately may represent an early move by the describe these relations. Perhaps a better Chacoan elite to gain control over would be interregional interaction, along turquoise production in the area, as the lines of the model suggested by Stein Guadalupe sits near several productive (1999) as an alternative to doctrinaire turquoise mines, located in the vicinity WST. It has been demonstrated that of Mount Taylor (Judge 1989:232). goods flowed from the Anasazi out to Perhaps turquoise was used in some the neighboring polities, and from those form of a prestige-goods exchange groups back. Theseinteractions linked system between the elites at Chaco and Chaco to the states of Mexico, and their neighboring peoples. brought macaws, copper bells, and, some This model deals with Chaco argue, T -shaped doorways to the primarily in a single slice of time near its Southwest. Shells, ceramics, and a peak in the early 1100's. My hypothesis number of other items came from the was that the system would start small and expand to encompass new peoples [vol. 19,2004] S8 THE NEBRASKA ANTHROPOLOGIST and areas. Following Neitzel's model, alterations made to Anasazi sites in such does not appear to be the case, as Arizona and New Mexico to offer a very the actual extent of Chacoan power cursory model of Anasazi community doesn't seem to move outwards much organization based on World Systems after Phase I of construction, as several Theory. of the most distant outliers are incorporated into the system between 900 and 940. While there is some References Cited extension, the primary vehicle of Chaco an complexity development seems to be through intensification, not Doyel, David E., Cory D. Breternitz, and expansion. I found this a bit curious, but Michael P. Marshall could not find evidence that would refute 1984 Chacoan Community Structure: this on a general level. In view of this, Bis Sa' ani Pueblo and the Chaco and the fact that a complete Halo. Recent Research in Chaco reconstruction of a diachronic model Prehistory, edited by W.J. Judge and would absorb several papers of such J.D. Schelberg. Reports of the Chaco length, the model presented here deals Center, Number 8. National Park primarily with the system at the Service, Albuquerque. transition between the fifth major construction phase and the McElmo Durand, Steven E. and Kathy R. Durand Phase, the period of Chaco's greatest 2000 Notes from the Edge: Settlement power and substance. Pattern Changes at the Guadalupe Community. Great House Communities Across the Chacoan Conclusion Landscape, edited by John Kantner and Nancy M. Mahoney. The rich history of Chaco both as Anthropological Papers of the the home to a dynamic, complex culture University of Arizona, Number 64, and as a research topic for historians, Tucson. ethnographers, and archaeologists makes the application of new interpretive Flannery, Kent V. models particularly fruitful in 1976 The Early Mesoamerican Village. comparison to the rest of the. Southwest. Academic Press, New York. The architecture of the great houses, villages, and roads within the canyon Gledhill, John and in outlying settlements reflects, to a 1978 Formative Developments in the certain extent, the power relations that North American Southwest. British shaped this culture. Archaeological Reports 47: 241-284. Obviously, there are many things that architecture will not tell us. The Jeske, Robert J. various processes of social replication 1999 World Systems Theory, Core are inscrutable through an architectural Periphery Interactions, and Elite lens, as are shifts in dietary preferences Economic Exchange in or kinship systems. This project used the Mississippian Societies. World architectural developments and Systems Theory in Practice: [Drexler] SYSTEMIC NESTING AMONG THE ANASAZI: AD 900-1140 59

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