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Becoming Chacoan: the Archaeology of the Aztec North Great House

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Becoming Chacoan: the Archaeology of the Aztec North Great House Binghamton University The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB) Graduate Dissertations and Theses Dissertations, Theses and Capstones Spring 5-19-2019 Becoming Chacoan: The Archaeology of the Aztec North Great House Michelle I. Turner Binghamton University--SUNY, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Turner, Michelle I. 2019 Becoming Chacoan: The Archaeology of the Aztec North Great House. Ph.D. Dissertation, , Binghamton University. This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations, Theses and Capstones at The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). For more information, please contact [email protected]. BECOMING CHACOAN: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE AZTEC NORTH GREAT HOUSE BY MICHELLE I. TURNER BA, American University, 1996 JD, Vanderbilt University, 2000 MA, Binghamton University, 2015 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate School of Binghamton University State University of New York 2019 © Copyright by Michelle Ida Turner 2019 All Rights Reserved Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate School of Binghamton University State University of New York 2019 May 8, 2019 Dr. Ruth M. Van Dyke, Chair and Faculty Advisor Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University Dr. Randall H. McGuire, Member Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University Dr. Siobhan M. Hart, Member Department of Anthropology, Skidmore College Dr. Nancy Um, Outside Examiner Department of Art History, Binghamton University iii Abstract Between 900 and 1140 CE, people at Chaco Canyon and throughout its region built multistory monumental structures with hundreds of rooms, known as great houses. This dissertation reports on recent archaeological testing on one such great house, the Aztec North great house at Aztec Ruins National Monument. I argue that Aztec North’s occupation represents an early, transitional period, as people previously not involved in the Chaco world made choices that increasingly brought them into Chaco’s orbit and changed their way of life forever. The structure represents a remarkable architectural experiment in large-scale adobe construction, one that likely was not terribly successful but that might have been an inspiration for generations after. The two main strands of data I report here, the architecture and the artifact assemblage, each tell a very different story. The artifact assemblage is one entirely typical of a Chacoan great house fully absorbed in the network of trade that characterized the Chacoan world. The architecture, however, suggests a more complicated site biography, with some aspects that seem entirely Chacoan, and a few striking elements that are not at all characteristic of Chacoan construction. Drawing on theories of social complexity, landscape archaeology and materiality, I argue that this great house was a site of rapid transition and of a community drawn into the Chacoan world in very short order, and perhaps with unintended consequences. iv Acknowledgements For an assorted gang of thoroughbred good sports, witty conversationalists, and loyal friends, I whole-heartedly recommend American archaeologists. Ann Axtell Morris, in Digging in the Southwest (1933, 1978: 18-19). No research project is ever truly the work of just one person, but this is especially true of an archaeological fieldwork project on public land, followed by the analysis of thousands of artifacts. Behind this dissertation stands a crowd of friends and colleagues whose muscles, minds and time helped make this project a reality. For making this project even conceivable, I must thank the archaeologists and other staff at Aztec Ruins National Monument. In particular, a thousand thanks to my friend and mentor Lori Stephens Reed, who taught me everything I know about ceramics in the Southwest, who quietly shepherded this whole project forward from a vague idea to everything it has become, and who was there to help at every turn with archaeological knowledge and logistical experience. My gratitude also to Aron Adams, who has worn many different hats at Aztec Ruins since I met him but who was always the driving force in getting this project through the permitting process. Park archaeologist Stephen Matt helped make it all work in the field, helped me out in the lab and even volunteered his after-work hours to help me sort artifacts. Additional thanks go to Park Superintendent Denise Robertson, former Superintendent Larry Turk, Jeffery Wharton, Vern Hensler, Joanne Young, Dana Hawkins, Kathy Hensler, Cyresa Bloom and everyone else who welcomed me during the two summers I worked on Aztec North artifacts at Aztec Ruins. v This project began in the mind of Ruth Van Dyke, my PhD advisor, who was thinking about Aztec North and talking to Lori and Aron about this project long before I’d ever met any of them. Ruth’s optimism, wisdom and persistence are the only reason any of this ever happened. She also led the fieldwork and is responsible for all of our success. And of course, her theoretical engagements and her work on Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins have inspired everything in this dissertation. I also want to thank the many tribal leaders who I met with at the NPS consultation meeting in April 2015. They were very kind to me, and many of them were extremely supportive and excited about our project, and I hope that they will be pleased with the results. Then there is the field crew. How to thank friends who gave up a month of their lives to move dirt in the desert, for no pay and not much credit beyond what I can give them in this dissertation? This crew—Ruth Van Dyke, Randy McGuire, Lubna Omar, Kellam Throgmorton, Maxwell Forton, Samuel Stansel and Josh Jones— was extraordinary, and I am lucky to count all of these people as my friends. The hard work, keen observations, careful record keeping, experience and knowledge of these individuals underlie everything I have to say in this dissertation. We also had help from several visiting archaeologists who dug with us and shared their perspectives. These included Chuck Riggs, Blythe Morrison, Gary Brown, Donna Brown, Donna Glowacki and Shanna Diederichs. And a special thanks to the 2016 Junior ROTC members at Aztec Ruins, who helped out with the task of backfilling our trenches. A number of other visitors came out to the site and helped shape our understandings. These folks included Steve Lekson, Cathy Cameron, Tom Windes, Linda Wheelbarger, Jakob Sedig, Paul Reed, Larry Baker, Caitlin Sommer, Steve vi Copeland, Grant Coffey, Will Tsosie, Kyle Bocinsky and Tim Kohler. I am grateful to all of them for bringing fresh eyes to the project. My other committee members also played an enormous part in this project. I am grateful to Randy McGuire for the knowledge and experience he brought to the fieldwork and the incredible amount of dirt that he moved, but also for his theoretical perspectives which have been formative in my understandings of southwestern archaeology. Siobhan Hart’s work on cultural heritage and community archaeology are some of the most important influences I have found in my graduate school career, but it is her Laboratory Methods course that I thought of most as I worked on this dissertation. She was the first person to push me beyond just analyzing individual artifacts, to thinking about managing and interpreting an entire assemblage, and that was absolutely crucial to the work I’ve done here. Many volunteers generously contributed their time towards the analysis of artifacts. Nikki Berkebile came to Aztec to help float all of the archaeobotanical samples, and later she spent her evenings after work for several weeks peering through a microscope to analyze the seeds in some of those samples. Karen Adams kindly helped with the analysis and interpretation of the archaeobotanical samples as well. Brie-Anna Langlie of Binghamton University helped me in so many ways, and has continued working with her undergraduate students on additional botanical samples. I must also thank Chuck Riggs and Fort Lewis College for loaning us their flotation machine. Thanks to Laurie Webster for taking the time to look at my one little piece of twine, and for her encouragement and friendship. Much gratitude also to Jeff Ferguson of the University of Missouri, who sourced our obsidian. vii Kellam Throgmorton and Lubna Omar volunteered for the fieldwork, but I’m not sure they realized they would also get talked into months of subsequent artifact analysis (lithic and faunal, respectively). I am so grateful for their expertise and their time, and for graciously fielding my thousand and one questions. Thanks also to my friend, geoarchaeologist Dana Yakabowskas, who helped with my mineral artifacts. Aztec Ruins volunteer Gingie Williamson helped me immensely with washing and sorting artifacts, and her kindness, joy and amazement at what we were doing made the monotonous scrubbing of dirty pottery a pleasure. My friend Liz Cowell also helped me with washing artifacts. Aztec Ruins volunteer Meri Gill scanned hundreds of pages of field notes for me so that I could leave New Mexico with everything safely backed up. Correspondence with archaeologists Hannah Mattson and Kathy Durand has helped me in thinking clearly about our assemblage, and conversations with Steve Lekson have influenced my thinking about the architecture. I do not know how I would have dealt with the complexities of radiocarbon dating without the help of David Mixter, who helped me strategize about selecting samples, write a grant application about it, understand the meaning of our results, and grasp the statistical methods that made it more useful.
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