The Chaco Connection: Evaluating Bonito-style Architecture in Outlier Communities (original) (raw)

1999, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Because architecture shapes and is shaped by human actions and perceptions, architectural variability has the potential to provide information about relationships among prehistoric social groups. This study examines communicative and enculturative information contained in Bonitostyle architecture constructed in Chaco Canyon and outlying communities during the late eleventh century A.D. Does the appearance of Bonito-style architecture at outliers constitute direct involvement on the part of a centralized, Chacoan entity or could local people have been emulating Bonito-style architecture they saw at Chaco or in neighboring communities? These questions have implications for existing models of Chacoan social organization. To investigate, a comparative architectural analysis uses data from 61 great houses in 55 outlier communities. Analysis is based on the premise that outlier similarity should reflect a unified, direct Chacoan source for Bonito-style architecture, and diversity should reflect the converse. Because highly visible, external architectural characteristics can be emulated, five internal, low-visibility greathouse architectural attributes were selected for comparison. Results indicate substantial diversity is contained within the Chacoan world. A variety of relationships probably existed between outlier communities and Chaco Canyon, and a range of explanatory models is necessary. Bonito-style architecture is more likely to be associated with a struggle to legitimate social power than with spontaneous, cooperative communal activity. Competitive emulation may account for the appearance of Bonito-style architecture in outlier communities toward the local end of the outlier spectrum. . Not only are architectural remains perhaps the most durable and the most visible aspect of material culture subject to the archaeologist's gaze, but buildings provide a direct means for reconstruction of the interactive, recursive relationship between lived experience and the built environment. Prehistoric structures have been employed by archaeologists in the American Southwest in the construction of temporal, social, functional, and demographic knowledge Schlanger 1986). Architectural variability has the potential to provide information about relationships among social groups. Prehistoric builders made choices about materials, techniques, and structural configurations that cannot be reduced to functional concerns. Low-visibility or internal architectural attributes lack overt communicative potential and thus reflect the learning frameworks of the builders; patterning among internal architectural characteristics can be used to distinguish