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Peak of Chaco Culture
In the 1020s, Chaco culture in the American Southwest was at its peak: Great Houses such as Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon housed thousands of people,…
Timeline
- 1020–1029Pueblo Bonito · New MexicoPueblo Bonito was the largest Great House in Chaco Canyon, a multi-story stone structure surrounding a central plaza with roughly eight hundred rooms, embodying the Chacoans' superb stonemasonry and centralized settlement pattern.
- 1020–1029Northern exit of Chaco Canyon · American SouthwestStraight Chaco roads connected the canyon center with satellite communities on the Colorado Plateau, in the San Juan Basin, and elsewhere, transporting timber, pottery, and ritual objects and sustaining interregional political-religious alliances.
- 1020–1029Simogona · New MexicoChaco elites controlled the mining and distribution of turquoise from deposits in present-day Arizona and New Mexico; turquoise beads and parrot feathers symbolized ritual authority, and the trade network extended as far as western Mexico.
Sources
- The Chaco Meridian: Centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest — Stephen H. Lekson (1999)
- A History of the Ancient Southwest — Stephen H. Lekson (2009)