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21 - Regional study: Chaco Canyon and the US Southwest

from Part II - Trans-regional and regional perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

Craig Benjamin
Affiliation:
Grand Valley State University, Michigan
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Summary

Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, with its monumental eleventh-twelfth-century CE 'Great Houses', is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the US Southwest. The Southwest is a well-known region, and a major cultural heritage theme within the United States, comprising the states of New Mexico, Arizona, and the southern portions of Colorado and Utah. 'Anasazi' is an archaeological term, anglicized from a Navajo phrase, for the ancient peoples of the Four Corners region in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl were considered separate sites; but those Great Houses and many other sites in the canyon constituted a single urban or near urban settlement. The New Archaeology of the 1970s and early 1980s favored local adaptation over diffusion, migration, and extra-regional influences. Chaco can only be understood in the context of its world history: a frontier society on the edge of, but significantly connected to, Mesoamerica, reflecting the history of Mesoamerica's civilizations.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further Reading

Cameron, Catherine M. (ed.), Chaco and after in the Northern San Juan: Excavations at the Bluff Great House, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008.Google Scholar
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Frazier, Kendrick, People of Chaco: A Canyon and Its Culture, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.Google Scholar
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Judd, Neil M., Pueblo del Arroyo, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 138, Washington, dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1959.Google Scholar
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