The Chaos of Road

One of the great cultures of ancient North America? was located in Chaco Canyon in the American Southwest. Here, starting around? A.D. 900, communities flourished for two and a half centuries, during a time of? constant climatic change, expanding from their canyon homeland to encompass? an area of more than 64,750 square kilometers of the surrounding San Juan Basin? and adjacent uplands. Roads and visual communication systems linked outlying communities? with the canyon. Large adobe buildings such as the semicircular Pueblo Bonito? housed hundreds of people. The population of Chaco Canyon rose from a few? hundred to at least 5,500 inhabitants, with many more people visiting for? major ceremonies and trading activities.?

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During the 1970s and 1980s, aerial photography? and side-scan radar placed Chaco at the center of a vast landscape, revealing? a web of over 644 kilometers of unpaved roadways linking Chaco? communities with over 30 outlying settlements. Chaco’s inhabitants had no? carts or animals for pulling them, but they built shallow trackways up to about? 12 meters wide that were either cut a few inches into the underlying soil or? demarcated by low banks or stone walls. Each highway runs straight for long? distances, some for as much as 96 kilometers, and each is linked to a major? community at the canyon itself. The people approached the canyon along? straight walkways, descending to their adobe buildings from stone-cut steps in the cliffs.?

The Chacoan “roads” are a mystery.? Were they used for travel or for transport of vital commodities? For years,? archaeologists have argued for some form of integrated Chacoan cultural? system, which would have unified a large area of the Southwest a thousand? years ago. One authority, James Judge, believes that the San Juan Basin’s harsh? and unpredictable climate, with its frequent droughts, caused? isolated communities in the area to form loosely structured alliances for? exchanging food and other vital commodities. Chaco lay at the hub of the? exchange system and also served as the ritual center for major rainmaking? ceremonies and festivals. The canyon’s great houses were the homes of? privileged families who were able to predict the movements of heavenly? bodies and controlled ritual activity.?

?In Judge’s scenario, the roads were pilgrimage and? trading walkways. However, archaeologist John Roney points out that there are no signs of domestic rubbish or encampments along the roads. On the ground, he has followed many of the fuzzy lines on air photographs, verifying? more than 60 road segments, many of them short and without specific? destination. Roney is certain that? major north and south tracks radiated from Chaco, but he is cautious? about joining segments into long lines uniting distant places on the map.? He is sure of travel along a mere 250 kilometers of roads and believes? that the Chacoans constructed the walkways as monuments, as a ritual? gesture, not to be used.??

?It is possible that roads do not always? have to lead to a destination, as Westerners always believe, and that? the answer to the Chaco road mystery may lie not in the? archaeological record but in Pueblo Indian spiritual beliefs.? The so-called Great North Road is a case in point. Several lesser? roadways from Chaco Canyon’s great houses of Pueblo Bonito? and Chetro Ketl ascend Chaco’s north wall to converge on Pueblo Alto.? From there, the road travels 13 degrees northeast for about 3 kilometers? before heading directly north for nearly 48 kilometers across open country? to Kutz Canyon, where it vanishes. North is the primary direction in the mythology of present-day Keresan-speaking Pueblo peoples, who may have ancestry among Chaco communities. North led to the place of origin,? the place where the spirits of the dead went. Chaco’s Great North Road? may have been a link to the underworld, a conduit of spiritual power.? Another Pueblo concept, that of the Middle Place, was the point where? the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west) came together.? Pueblo Bonito, with its cardinal layout, may have been the Middle Place.? The great houses and trackways of Chaco Canyon thus may have formed? a sacred landscape, a symbolic place where Chaco inhabitants acted out? their beliefs and commemorated the passage of seasons.?

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