HOUSES OF THE SUN AND THE COLLAPSE OF CHACOAN CULTURE (original) (raw)

HOUSES OF THE SUN AND THE COLLAPSE OF CHACOAN CULTURE

J. McKim Malville and Andrew Munro

Abstract

The most monumental prehistoric masonry structures north of Mexico are the Great Houses of the Bonito Phase of Chaco Canyon. The largest was Pueblo Bonito with nearly 700 rooms. The Great Houses are associated with a regional system which dominated the southwest during the 11th 11^{\text {th }} century. During that time Chaco Canyon flourished as a pilgrimage and trade centre, apparently resulting in a concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of elite residents of the Great Houses. Following the drought of 1090-1100 CE the power of the residents of the Great Houses apparently waned. After 1100 the Great Houses built in the Late Bonito Phase are distinguished by their planned designs, relatively short construction period, and negligible middens. Unlike the earlier Great Houses, many of these are located at places that provide solstice sunrise or sunsets associated with notable horizon features. These Great Houses may have been intended to provide visitors and pilgrims with dramatic visual astronomical experiences. One interpretation involves an effort by the elite residents of the Great Houses to revive the pilgrimage system by new construction at astronomically significant locations. An alternate interpretation is that the Late Bonito Great Houses resulted from a spontaneous religious revival, in which the structures were built by pilgrims who visited the canyon to honour, worship, and/or make offerings to the sun. This movement may have presaged the rejection and eventual collapse of the hierarchal political system of Chaco. Animism and alternate ontologies are considered in interpreting the experiences of those viewing dramatic sunrises and sunsets in the canyon.

Introduction

During the Classic Bonito Phase of Chaco Canyon (1040-1100 CE), Great Houses became the most monumental prehistoric masonry structures in the Americas north of Mexico. The largest of these Great Houses, Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo Alto, Pueblo del Arroyo, and Kin Kletso, are contained in a 2 km wide area known as downtown Chaco. 1{ }^{1} The largest, Pueblo Bonito, was constructed over a 300 year period, contained nearly 700 rooms stacked 4 or 5 stories high, covering an area of 0.8 ha . Only the outer rooms had sunlight. Only a few families lived in this huge structure, perhaps having acquired wealth and power through the combination of pilgrimage and trade. Judging from the number of corn-grinding metates and large ovens, there were large festivals associated

[1]

1. 1{ }^{1} Steven Lekson, ed., The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-Century Pueblo Regional Center (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2006). ↩︎

with these Great Houses that were likely pilgrimage and trade events occurring around the winter solstice.

The great drought of 1090-1100 CE appears to have changed the character of Chacoan society. After 1100 CE, in the Late Bonito Period, the majority of newly constructed Great Houses were located at sites that provide exceptional views of the solstice sunrise or sunset. Two of the Late Bonito Great Houses were contained in north-south alignments with earlier structures.

Fig. 1: Great Houses at Chaco Canyon. The Late Bonito Great Houses are identified in boxes, in which DSSR and JSSR indicate horizon markers for December solstice sunrise and June Solstice sunrise, respectively (adapted from Lekson). 2{ }^{2}

Figure 1 provides a map of Chaco Canyon in which Late Bonito Great House are labelled DSSR for the December solstice sunrise, JSSR for the June solstice sunrise, or JSSS for the June solstice sunset. Late Bonito Great Houses are distinguished by their pre-planned designs, relatively short construction period, and negligible middens, which indicates that they never fully functioned as residences. See Tables 1 and 2; those listed in Table 2 are the major Late Bonito

[1]

1. 2{ }^{2} Lekson, The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon, An Eleventh-Century Pueblo Regional Centre. ↩︎

Great Houses. We are currently investigating other less known cases. Lekson has suggested that they were administrative and storage buildings, an idea that has been contested by Van Dyke and others. 3{ }^{3}

Table 1:
Van Dyke suggested that the Late Bonito Great Houses were built at a time when Chaco was losing credibility as an efficacious ceremonial centre, because of the decrease in agricultural production in the Chaco basin brought about by the drought during the decade of the 1090s CE. Figure 2 shows the added storage area in the Great Houses estimated by Wilcox. 4{ }^{4} Note the gap in construction activity during the decade of 1090 CE. The burst of construction in 1110 and the following two decades was associated with the Late Bonito Great Houses.

After 1100 CE, both Wijiji and Kin Kletso were built at locations that include foresights for the December solstice sunrise, as well as for anticipatory observations approximately two weeks prior to the solstice. Solstice sunrises visible from Wijiji and Kin Kletso are not architectural alignments of walls to significant azimuths; rather the buildings are located at observation sites for

[1]

1. 3{ }^{3} Ruth Van Dyke, The Chaco Experience, Landscape and Ideology at the Center Place (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2008).
   4{ }^{4} David Wilcox ‘The Evolution of the Chacoan Polity’, in Chimney Rock: The Ultimate Outlier, ed. J. McKim Malville (Lantham: Lexington Books, 2004,2004), pp. 164 200. ↩︎

solstice horizon foresights. 5{ }^{5} Both contain anticipatory foresights, which may have been useful to prepare for ceremonies. The Great House of Wijiji has two solstice sunrise events: a horizon notch marks the December solstice sunrise and a short distance away the December solstice sun can be viewed dramatically rising over a prominent natural rock pillar. 6{ }^{6}

Fig. 2: Storage floor area added to Chaco Canyon Great Houses.

[1]

1. 5{ }^{5} J. McKim Malville, A Guide to Prehistoric Astronomy in the Southwest (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 2008), -pp. 70-73.
   6{ }^{6} Michael Zeilik and Richard Elston, ‘Wijiji at Chaco Canyon: a winter solstice sunrise and sunset station’, Archaeoastronomy 6 (1983)-); pp. 66-73. ↩︎

Fig. 3: Sunset observed from Casa Chiquita. Photo by G. B. Cornucopia.

Table 2:
By standing at the southeast corner of Kin Kletso, an anticipatory observation of the foresight may be made fifteen to sixteen days prior to solstice. On December solstice, sunrise is observable from the northeast corner, appearing the northern cliff meets the floor of the canyon (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Kin Kletso June Solstice Sunrise (photo by G. B. Cornucopia).
Robert’s Small Pueblo was built 125m from a station with a December solstice sunrise horizon marker. The horizon at Casa Chiquita contains a June solstice sunset marker, similar to the December solstice sunrise foresight visible at nearby Kin Kletso but using a different horizon feature.

Fig. 5: December solstice sunrise near Roberts Small Pueblo.
The back-filled Late Bonito Great House known as Headquarters Site A has an eastern horizon feature that produced a dramatic December solstice sunrise light and shadow effect on most of the building’s footprint. Sunrise on the December solstice occurs in a well-defined notch on the horizon.

Fig. 6: Horizon Survey Results at Headquarters Site A.
These two inter-site N-S alignments across the central canyon are especially interesting as possible demonstrations of the interaction of the north celestial pole with the human construct of a Great House. People at Tsin Kletsin could have watched the night sky rotate around the centre of the cosmos directly above Pueblo Alto. Similarly, people observing the night sky from Casa Rinconada could have watched the cosmos rotate over New Alto. Torchlight at the northern mesa-top sites could have increased dramatic visual demonstrations of the connections between the Chacoan Great Houses and the heavens.

Interpretation

Initially the power of the elite residents of the Great Houses may have been derived from control over trade associated with periodic regional festivals. The residents who organized these festivals must have acquired power, wealth, and prestige when rain making rituals appeared to be successful. They also should have acquired some measure of political or religious legitimacy through demonstrating their knowledge of astronomy and control of the calendar.

Comment

The symbiotic linking of pilgrimage, periodic festivals, and entrepreneurial activity provides a means for integration of an extended population. If groups of people voluntarily visited Chaco Canyon to attend period festivals and religious ceremonies, the surrounding area could have become culturally integrated without any exercise of administrative control, force or political power. 7{ }^{7}

The suggestion by Van Dyke that the Late Bonito Great Houses were built after the drought of the 1090s to re-establish the reputation of Chaco as an efficacious ceremonial centre, implies the residents of the Great Houses acted in concert with each other or were dominated by a central authority in the canyon. 8{ }^{8} However, if the leaders of Chaco Canyon wanted to rebuild their legitimacy, it seems likely they would have enhanced the already dramatic and imposing Bonito Phase Great Houses. The monumental structures of Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl already projected power. A case in point is Tiwanaku in the 11th 11^{\text {th }} centuryth century on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca. Vranich interprets Tiwanaku as a highly complex ceremonial centre, similar in many regards to the Chaco regional system. 9{ }^{9} It was dependent upon ‘high-energy, popular ritual events’ to attract resource bearing visitors from outlying communities. Massive new construction, sometimes involving façades, was designed to impress the visitors. Tiwanaku had Tiwanaku had outlying communities, similar to Chacoan outliers in that their residents visited the centre for periodic festivals and constructed their own copies of the monumental structures of the centre.

Those pilgrimages that may have taken place during the Chaco florescence in the 11th 11^{\text {th }} century may fall under two general anthropological theories, characterized sometimes as Durkheimian or Turnerian. 10{ }^{10} Perhaps these Late Bonito Great Houses reveal a transition from a Durkheimian form of pilgrimage to one what can be described as Turnerian. From the viewpoint of Emile Durkheim, religion is not a spontaneous and inherent human creation but is the result of socio-political processes, sometime intentionally manipulative, in which an elite class creates a mythology and organizes participatory rituals to

[1]

1. 7{ }^{7} J. McKim Malville and Nancy J. Malville, ‘Pilgrimage and Periodic Festivals as Processes of Social Integration in Chaco Canyon’, Kiwa-66 Kiwa 66 (2001): pp. 327-344.
   8 Van Dyke, The Chaco Experience, Landscape and Ideology at the Center Place.
   9{ }^{9} Alexei Vranich, ‘The Development of the Ritual Core of Tiwanaku’, in Tiwanaku, ed. Margaret Young-Sanchez (Denver, CO: Denver Art Museum, 2009), pp. 11-34.
   10{ }^{10} John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, eds., Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London: Routledge, 2001). ↩︎

promote and maintain their own political authority. 11{ }^{11} Such pilgrimage systems ‘legitimize domination and oppression’ by an elite. 12{ }^{12} Construction of the Great Houses may have involved the corvée labour of pilgrims, consistent with the Durkheim model.

The alternative to such a ‘top down’ organization of pilgrimage by elites in the canyon is that of a spontaneous, self-organized religious revival. The return of the rains around 1100 may have caused pilgrims to visit the canyon to honour, worship, and/or make offerings to the sun and construct smaller versions of the Great Houses at places where the solstice sun could be seen joined on the horizon with the sacred landscape. This style of pilgrimage, proposed by Victor and Edith Turner (Turner 1979; Turner and Turner 1978), involves a diametrically opposite relationship between pilgrims and political authority. 13{ }^{13} In their view, pilgrimage subverts established social order and is counter-hegemonic in that it challenges the authority of the state by setting up competing religious symbols and destinations. The Turners argue that when pilgrims voluntarily embark on their journey they abandon the structures of their ordinary world and enter a landscape of ‘anti-structure’ where ordinary norms and differences of status are left behind. Pilgrims may have intentionally avoided the Great Houses and rejected the political power that they represented. Lekson suggests that historical egalitarian Pueblos reacted against the Classic Bonito political system, its palatial residences of leaders and hierarchal social structure, and that such a rejection may have occurred initially in the 1100s. 14{ }^{14}

We consider two primary alternate interpretations of Late Bonito Great Houses. They were constructed (1) to maintain the political power of leaders in the canyon or (2) as the result of spontaneous religious revival. We note that these need not be mutually exclusive. It is appropriate to ask what visitors to these Great Houses actually saw on the mornings or evenings of solstice. It is indeed likely that the experience was significantly different for them than it is for us. We see the sun as a hot ball of gas 92 million miles away fuelled by thermonuclear processes in its centre. For those watching a sunrise in the 1100s in Chaco canyon, it was a different universe. If we are to understand what ancient people saw and how they experienced the heavens, we have to go beyond judging other world views as 'fascinating but ultimately mistaken ways

[1]

1. 11{ }^{11} Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1912).
   12 John Eade and Michael Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage…
   13 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1979).
   14{ }^{14} Lekson, The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon. ↩︎

of knowing the world’. 15{ }^{15} As Fowles argues '… are we really to conclude that Native Americans ‘see’ Father Sun travelling across the heavens any less clearly than Anglo American scientists see a stationary mass of hydrogen and helium? 16{ }^{16} The growing interest among archaeologists about animism and alternate ontologies alerts us to consider the sacredness of both the sun and the natural horizon. Both may have been understood to be animate, powerful, and engaged in reciprocal relationships with humans. 17{ }^{17} These powerful and dramatic apparitions of the sun conjoined with unusual horizon features could have been theophanies, manifestations of divine beings vastly more powerful than humans 18{ }^{18}. The places for such experiences may have been the Late Bonito Great Houses. The meaning and function of Great Houses may have evolved over time as the accumulation of memories of rituals, ceremonies, important events, and burials transformed residential structures into sacred realms. These post Bonito Great Houses appear to be uniquely Chacoan. They may have combined elements of the ‘shrines, monasteries, temples, tombs, and cathedrals’ of other cultures, but none encapsulates the fullness of their meaning. They may have become too sacred for ordinary uses.

Building these structures failed to preserve either the political system centred on Chaco Canyon or the tradition of pilgrimage to Chaco Canyon. For a variety of reasons including perhaps the greediness of its elites and reaction against its hierarchical polity, combined with an extended drought beginning around 1030 CE the Chaco regional system failed. This failure may be a presage of the larger rejection of the Chaco Bonito Phase by modern Pueblos suggested by Lekson. 19{ }^{19} Portions of the political centre moved from Chaco Canyon to Aztec, where we have not yet found any evidence for an interest in solar theophanies. Similar

[1]

1. 15 Benjamin Alberti and Yvonne Marshall, ‘Animating Archaeology: Local Theories and Conceptually Open-ended Methodologies’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19, no. 3 (2009): pp. 344-56; Benjamin Alberti and Tamara Bray, ‘Animating Archaeology: Of Subjects, Objects and Alternative Ontologies’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19, no. 3 (2009): pp. 337-343.
   16 Severin Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings: Secularism and the Study of Pueblo Religion, (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2013), p. 9.
   17{ }^{17} See, for example, Bill Sillar, ‘The Social Agency of Things? Animism and Materiality in the Andes’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19 (2009): pp. 367-377.
   18{ }^{18} Mircea Eliade. Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York: New American Library, 1958). The sacred sun and sacred land, alive, powerful, and mysterious, may best understood as elements in Descola’s analogistic ontology: Philippe Descola. Beyond Nature and Culture, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
   19{ }^{19} Lekson, The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon, pp. 29-31. ↩︎

juxtapositions of the sun and moon with unique features of the horizon are, however, found at Chimney Rock, Yucca Great House and Cliff Palace of Mesa Verde. 20{ }^{20}

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[1]

1. 20{ }^{20} Malville, Prehistoric Astronomy; John Ninnemann and J. McKim Malville, ‘Using Photography to Test Hypotheses in Southwestern Archaeoastronomy’, Archaeoastronomy 23 (2010): pp. 82-90. ↩︎

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