by Elizabeth Miller on
FOR ANCESTRAL PUEBLOAN PEOPLE, Chaco Canyon may have been a central place, but the culture spread across the present-day boundaries of four states. Hundreds of additional communities share Chaco’s traits as they evolved over roughly 2,000 years: great houses as centerpieces to a community of smaller dwellings, enclosed kivas, intricate stonework, multistory buildings or construction on high places that appear big and impressive, and even road segments. Here are some stops for the tour.
Pueblo Pintado. About 15 miles along Chaco Wash from the park and near the Navajo community that shares its name, the L-shaped edifice opens to the southeast, lining up with Chetro Ketl in the central canyon and with the lunar position during the 18.6-year cycle on which the moonrise shifts along the horizon. “It was designed to be on this line to a building that you can’t even see in Chaco,” archaeologist Robert Weiner says.
Casamero Pueblo. Twenty miles west of Grants, the 22-room pueblo was among the sites recognized in the UNESCO World Heritage designation for Chaco. Skirting brilliant red sandstone cliffs on Tecolote (or Owl) Mesa, it was built right in front of where two owl-eye-like gaps peer out from the stone.
Aztec Ruins National Monument. As people began to leave Chaco, they took up residence about 55 miles north near the present-day town of Aztec, bringing the crafts and building traditions with them. The monument holds some of the best-preserved Chacoan structures, with stone walls and original wooden beams still standing. “Aztec wants to be a little mini-Chaco,” explains Ruth Van Dyke, an anthropology professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton who has spent her career studying the connections among Chaco Canyon and those more distant communities. “It certainly tried to replace Chaco as a central gathering place and as a major political force for Pueblo people.”
Salmon Ruins. Near Bloomfield, the site was built around 1090 by migrants from Chaco Canyon with a similar great-house structure and a solar alignment on the summer solstice.
Bandelier National Monument. Some people who left Chaco around 1150 likely lived on the Pajarito Plateau, but population growth and most construction came later. Still, kivas and monumental architecture are a through line for both Chaco and Bandelier. “All cultures and societies move and change over time, and the Puebloan culture and society is no different,” explains Jamie Civitello, integrated resources program manager at Bandelier.
Chimney Rock National Historic Site. Chacoans traced the moon along its 18.6-year lunar cycle from north to south. Two stone pillars in what is now Colorado frame the rising moon during the “lunar standstill,” the farthest point in its traverse across the sky, with a great house lined up on a spine of rock just below.
Mesa Verde National Park. Great house communities at Mesa Verde date to the same time as high Chaco—and earlier Ancestral Puebloan settlements are found there too. The famed cliff dwellings date to the 1200s—during Aztec’s more dominant era—when the climate had gotten rough and social unrest had increased.
Wupatki National Monument. Near Flagstaff, Arizona, Wupatki “has amazing Pueblo architecture and a ball court, representing influence and connection to areas farther south in Arizona,” says Paul Reed, a preservation archaeologist with Archaeology Southwest.
Edge of the Cedars State Park and Museum. The Blanding, Utah, site includes a 1,000-year-old kiva that visitors can enter. The great house seems to have been occupied later than Chaco, which was more common moving farther from Chaco Canyon, Van Dyke says.
Hovenweep National Monument. Ancestral Puebloans built square and circular towers shortly after Chaco in this Utah site. “The towers have really bollixed archaeologists forever. Are they defensive? Are they signaling? Are they astronomical alignments? Are they all of the above?” Van Dyke says. “They’re just a very strange thing that happens in the Four Corners.”
Taos Pueblo and Acoma Pueblo’s Sky City. By the late 1200s, many Puebloans were settling along the Río Grande, where many still are. “These places are all connected,” Van Dyke says. “They don’t look the same because they’re different moments in Pueblo time.”