SOCIO-POLITICAL COMPLEXITY AND RELIGION AMONG THE ANCESTRAL PUEBLO OF CHACO CANYON, NEW MEXICO

Abstract

For the Ancestral Pueblo or ancient Anasazi, life in the American southwest meant continual adaptation to a constantly changing environment. Extremes of temperature and variations in rainfall impacted every area of Anasazi life, often making food production difficult, influencing population and settlement size. However, the people were not overcome by this harsh environment but used the resources available to their advantage, enduring and flourishing for more than six centuries, from approximately A.D. 800-1450 (Lekson, 1999; Pike, 1974; Stuart, 2000). Building on knowledge passed down through the generations, the Anasazi developed innovations during the eleventh and twelfth centuries that not only increased their quality of life but allowed the society to grow in both size and complexity (Lekson, 1999; Pike, 1974). This is particularly true of the residents of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, a people who constructed monumental Great Houses, integrating them into a system encompassing surrounding small sites and distant outliers (Cordell, 1997; Lekson, 1999). Much remains to be understood about life in Chaco Canyon, yet a high level of sociopolitical complexity can be inferred from a variety of sources, including comparison of the Great Houses to smaller habitation sites, indicating a distinction in social status between the residents of each architectural type (Frazier, 1999; Lekson, 2004; Sebastian, 1992). The nature of Chacoan exchange remains unclear, yet pottery and exotic imports found within the Great Houses suggest interactions over a wide geographic area, with unequal access to material culture between Great Houses and small sites (Neitzel, 1989; Sebastian, 1992; Toll, 1991). Extensive labor was invested in the construction of the Great Houses as well as the roads and irrigation networks, indicating organization beyond the level of loosely connected societies, requiring coordination of labor over extended periods of time and continual maintenance (Frazier, 1999; Sebastian, 1992). When coupled with ethnographic information from the Hopi and Zuni, descendants of the Anasazi, archaeological evidence suggests that socio-political complexity was directly influenced by religious practices within Chaco Canyon. The alignment of the Great Houses and roads with the cardinal directions indicates an attempt to recreate a sacred landscape, representing the ancestral journey to the Middle Place. The Great Houses then became pilgrimage destinations, with hundreds of people traveling along sacred roads to this area, walking from villages in and around the canyon (Pringle, 1996). Astronomical markers, incorporated into geological and architectural features suggest that religious authority was derived from observations of the heavens, with a select few able to predict eclipses, equinoxes, and solstices, events relating to agricultural cycles and the planning of festivals (Pringle, 1996; Roberts, 1996). Socio-political complexity can be inferred from site-size hierarchy as well as extensive trade, irrigation, and road networks, with ethnographic and archaeological evidence indicating strong religious influences.