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CHIMNEY ROCK: Chaco Or Not?

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Bianca
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« on: July 13, 2009, 09:53:31 am »













                                                       Chimney Rock: Chaco or not?



                                                Research may answer lingering questions






by Ann Bond
San Juan National Forest
July 10, 2009
PAGOSA SPRINGS

- After a hiatus of more than three decades, archaeologists once again are conducting excavations on the Great House Pueblo high atop a knife-edge mesa at Chimney Rock Archaeological Area in the San Juan National Forest.

Participants on a recent tour of Chimney Rock Archaeological Area view the Great House Pueblo, which some archaeologists believe may have been built by the ancient Chacoan culture of New Mexico.

Brenda Todd, a University of Colorado graduate student, discusses what the archaeologists working behind her hope to accomplish at Chimney Rock.

People are beating down doors to do this work for free because Chimney Rock is so famous.

- Steven Lekson, anthropology professorWhat they're finding may help explain the significance of the nearly thousand-year-old structure.

"It's a chance to have a new look at this site, because archaeology has really advanced in the last few decades," said San Juan National Forest Archaeologist Julie Coleman.

Steven Lekson, professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, is heading the effort. Although often it is hard to find archaeological students willing to conduct field work on a tight budget, he said the allure
of Chimney Rock has made this project financially feasible.

"People are beating down doors to do this work for free because Chimney Rock is so famous," he said.

One of the site's claims to fame is its possible tie to the major lunar standstill, an astronomical phenomenon
marking the end of the moon's northern migration cycle.

Every 18.6 years from the vantage point of the Great House, the moon will rise within a narrow window of sky framed by the giant rock spires that give Chimney Rock its name.

The most recent lunar standstill took place from 2004 to 2008. The next opportunity to view a major lunar
standstill at Chimney Rock will not take place until about 2022.

Earlier research at Chimney Rock conducted by Kim Malville, professor of astrophysical, planetary and atmospheric sciences at the University of Colorado, proposes that periods of construction at the Great House corresponded with the dates of historic lunar standstills.

"Based on research from the 1970s, we do think it was constructed in time for the major lunar standstill in 1076, and we think it was rebuilt in time for the next lunar standstill in the 1090s," Coleman said.

The current excavations may help clarify a connection.

"We've found pieces of burned beams we can carbon-date to help verify whether the major building episodes
here correspond with lunar standstills," said Brenda Todd, a University of Colorado graduate student working
on the project as part of her dissertation.

A fixation with solar and lunar cycles is something many associate with the ancient architecture found at New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The archaeologists working at Chimney Rock hope to unearth
other clues as to whether it was, indeed, part of the Chacoan world.

"We've found hundreds of tiny ears of burned corn we can chemically source to reveal nutrients in the soil
where it was grown," Lekson said. "We speculate that corn was grown all over the Four Corners to be
transported to Chacoan cities."

Past studies have indicated that timber from the forests around Chimney Rock may have been used in the construction of the Aztec and Salmon ruins near Farmington.

Line-of-sight surveys have revealed that signaling between Chimney Rock and Chaco would have been
possible from atop Huerfano Peak in New Mexico.

Despite these clues, Chimney Rock's inclusion in the Chacoan culture is still debated.

"Is it real Chaco? We're north of the so-called 'Adobe Curtain' at the New Mexico border, and some
archaeologists still say no," said Jason Chuipka, a former CU graduate student working on the excavation.

The Colorado archaeologists onsite, however, are convinced of the connection. They say Chimney Rock
was beautiful and unique, and therefore, coveted.

"With Chimney Rock, it's location, location, location," Todd said. "Of course, the Chacoans had to claim it."

Another important part of the ongoing project is to stabilize the Great House walls, which are losing a battle
with the elements in some spots.

Earlier excavations inadvertently put the sandstone-and-mud walls in jeopardy by leaving some adjacent
rooms filled with earth on one side and open to the air on the other.

Moisture from damp soil in the filled rooms has been wicking through to the open rooms on the other side,
taking a little bit of sandstone with it each time. Plans are to slow the deterioration by bringing soil to equal
levels on both sides of exposed walls.

"We're helping to fund the excavation and stabilization, but would also like to see the resulting information
used to build on educational aspects and interpretation," said James Stratis, who is with the Colorado
Historical Society State Historical Fund.



The efforts also are being funded by Save America's Treasures, the Gates Family Foundation, Tourism Cares
for Tomorrow and National Trust for Historic Preservation.





Ann Bond

is the public affairs specialist for the

San Juan National Forest.
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« Reply #1 on: July 13, 2009, 10:04:28 am »

 
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« Reply #7 on: August 12, 2009, 01:38:10 pm »











            Chaco Royalty Ordered 'Catered' Food at Colorado's Chimney Rock Site 1,000 Years Ago







July 28, 2009

Elite priests living in a spectacular spiritual outpost built high on a southwestern Colorado mountain ridge a thousand years ago likely had their meals catered by commoners living in the valley below, according to preliminary new research by a University of Colorado at Boulder archaeology team.

New findings from the Chimney Rock archaeological site near Pagosa Springs, Colo., suggest that resident elites were dining on elk and deer, unlike the workers who constructed the site, who were eating smaller game, according to CU-Boulder Professor Steve Lekson, who directed the excavation. The royalty at Chimney Rock -- an "outlier" of the brawny Chaco Canyon culture centered 90 miles away in northern New Mexico that ruled the Southwest with a heavy hand from about A.D. 850 to 1150 -- were likely tended to through a complex social, economic and political network, Lekson said.

"While our analysis has only begun, there might have been two different groups at Chimney Rock -- those that built it and the elites that inhabited it," said Lekson, curator of anthropology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. "It looks like the elites were calling the shots."

Chimney Rock is one of scores of Chaco outliers in the Southwest and perhaps its most dramatic, seated at 7,600 feet in altitude above the San Juan Basin. Located 1,000 feet above the nearest water source, the site -- marked by a pair of twin rock spires -- harbors a Chacoan-like "Great House" and great kiva that some archaeologists believe were built as part of a lunar observatory, said Lekson.

The 2009 Chimney Rock excavations were the first at the site since the early 1970s, when CU-Boulder archaeologists led by Professor Frank Eddy excavated one room of the Great House. In the late 1980s, calculations by CU-Boulder Professor Kim Malville indicated that construction periods of wooden ventilator shafts at Chimney Rock coincided with events called "lunar standstills." Such events occur about every 18 years when the full moon rises at its northernmost point on the horizon for several days at a time over a two-year period -- in this case, the point between the two spires as viewed from the great kiva.

The 2009 project -- which included the partial excavation of two rooms in the Chimney Rock Great House -- turned up pottery, stone tools, animal bones, the remains of ancient timbers and scores of burned corn ears, said Brenda Todd, a CU-Boulder doctoral student supervising the excavations. Although the site's rough occupation dates -- about 1075 to 1130 -- were previously calculated using tree-ring dates from 15 timbers, additional wood beam segments recovered this summer should help to pinpoint the distinct building episodes at Chimney Rock, Todd said.

"There seems to have been a ritual connection at Chimney Rock that was part of the mystique of the Chaco culture, and it included a desire for power over the cosmos," said Todd. "Harnessing that power by taking over this spiritually significant piece of landscape seems to have been an important thing for the Chaco elite."

The CU-Boulder team is making full use of new archaeological technologies developed in the past few years that should reveal more about life on the ridge, said Todd. The team hopes an analysis of mineral signatures within individual corn samples recovered at Chimney Rock, for example, will reveal not only where the corn was grown, but the specific sources of water it was drawing on from around the Southwest, she said.

Although few Pueblo people were living in the area prior to A.D. 850, they began moving into the nearby valleys once Chimney Rock was established, said Todd. "I think the people drawn to the area came in to serve the elites at Chimney Rock. And I think the elites who were living here probably came from Chaco Canyon."

The link between Chimney Rock and Chaco was strong, said Todd. Timbers used in the massive Chaco Canyon Great Houses and great kivas may have originated from the Chimney Rock region, since there are few pine trees around Chaco Canyon. Todd also speculated that deer and elk harvested from the forests around Chimney Rock may have been delivered to Chaco Canyon, as evidenced by bones found in ancient Chaco trash pits.

Large fireboxes at Chimney Rock likely were used to signal Chacoans at the summit of Huerfano Mesa, a plateau hosting ancient fireboxes some 30 miles to the southeast of Chimney Rock and in sight of Chaco Canyon, said Lekson. "There was almost certainly line-of-sight communication between Chimney Rock, Huerfano Mesa and Chaco Canyon," said Lekson. While there is no Chaco Great House on Huerfano Mesa, "elaborate fireboxes and shrines suggest that somebody was there to 'pick up the phone' and relay messages."

Unlike Chaco Canyon -- which was the hub of the Southwest Pueblo culture for about 300 years -- Chimney Rock's occupation was "short and sweet," lasting only about 50 years, said Lekson. For reasons still unknown, the Chimney Rock occupants abandoned the site about 1130, never to return.

CU-Boulder anthropology graduate student Kellem Throgmorton, who worked on the excavation of the two Great House rooms this year, said Chimney Rock inhabitants apparently burned the rooms at the end of the occupation. "It was standard practice for these people to close a site by burning the roof and letting the whole thing collapse down," he said. "The big surprise was that the rooms had not been cleared out completely before abandonment -- there were still items inside."

Todd said one of the rooms contained an intact pot that had been fixed into the floor and wall as a permanent fixture and also contained the jawbone of a large bear, an animal that had spiritual significance to the Chaco culture. "By all indications, this was a place for a few special people," Todd said.

Lekson said the Chaco culture -- which held political sway over a region twice the size of Ohio for centuries -- likely began disintegrating into warfare by the middle of the 12th century. He believes a spiritual tug-of-war involving Chacoans triggered some to migrate north toward Aztec, N.M., then later south to a site known as Paquime in northern Mexico on a vertical line he calls "The Chaco Meridian." Thousands of other Chaco people likely split off and moved to other pueblos south of Chaco Canyon, Lekson believes.

The CU-Boulder archaeological project at Chimney Rock began May 24 and was completed July 5, part of a larger effort by federal, state and private groups to investigate, restore and stabilize the site. The partnership includes the U.S. Forest Service and the volunteer Chimney Rock Interpretive Association, which conducts guided walking tours at the site during the summer.

In addition to Todd and Throgmorton, the CU-Boulder team included graduate students Alison Bredthauer, Erin Baxter and Jakob Sedig, as well as CU-Boulder graduate Jason Chuipka, now an archaeologist with Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants Inc. of Yellow Jacket, Colo. "This is a tremendous opportunity for our students," said Lekson. "This is a famous site, and probably no other archaeologists will get the opportunity to work here again in our lifetimes."

CU-Boulder has been involved in Southwest archaeological excavations for nearly a century. Building on three decades of intensive research in the region, Lekson published a book this June titled "A History of the Ancient Southwest." His wife, Professor Catherine Cameron of CU-Boulder's anthropology department, published a book in fall 2008 titled "Chaco and After in the Northern San Juan."



-CU-


Contact

Steve Lekson, 303-492-6671
lekson@colorado.edu
Brenda Todd, 970-210-5259
Brenda.Todd@colorado.edu
Jim Scott, 303-492-3114
 

Office of News Services
584 UCB  •  Boulder, CO 80309-0584  •  303-492-6431  •  FAX: 303-492-3126  •  cunews@colorado.edu

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