Chacoan great houses have been described as providing "ritual" or "integrative" venues and as "monumental" in scale and in the amount of labor required for their construction. This study takes the approach that part of the function of community, monumental, or ritual structures is to transmit meaning and that an examination of visibility connections between these structures and small habitation sites in the surrounding community may provide information about the role of these messages in daily practice. Survey data from the Chacoan community at Kin Bineola, New Mexico is analyzed in a GIS environment using a model of visibility and distance developed for this project. The results show that, contrary to expectations, the great house is much less visible than a less monumental "Chacoan structure." Shrines, small structures interpreted as having a ritual function, are by far the most visible, suggesting a more complex relationship between monumentality and visibility.

Thesis (B.S.)--University of Wisconsin -- La Crosse, 2007. / Also available online. Includes bibliographical references.

Built form, or human spatial organization, has usually been studied in cultural anthropology and archaeology as dependent on other factors such as social organization. Studies have been limited by a lack of measures permitting comparisons over time and space, so buildings remain little understood despite their visibility in the archaeological record. One approach emerging from multidisciplinary work emphasizes topology over physical characteristics such as shape and size; it examines linkages rather than individual components. The space syntax model of Bill Hillier and the Unit for Architectural Studies at University College London recognizes that spatial patterns are both the product and the generator of social relations. Built form is treated as part of a system of spatial relations, facilitating movement, encounter, and avoidance--both among occupants and between occupants and outsiders. Methods developed through analysis of a broad range of buildings and settlements are available to examine built space and its changes over time. A space syntax model allows a re-examination of great houses in and near Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, built from the mid-A.D. 800s to the mid-1100s. The great houses examined in Chaco Canyon are: Una Vida, Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo del Arroyo, Pueblo Alto, and Kin Kletso. The outliers are Salmon Ruin and West Aztec Ruin. Where sufficient data are available, the control and access features formalized through floorplans are graphed and quantified, allowing comparisons over construction phases and between different sites. The goal is to reevaluate past interpretations, ranging from heavily-populated villages to largely empty redistribution or ceremonial centers. More diversity rather than consistency is apparent from individual great house floor plans, but certain spatial characteristics emerge. Access patterns tend to be asymmetric and non-distributed, becoming deeper over time. Yet the occasional presence of rings, allowing alternate routes within a building, differs from earlier and later building forms. Access patterns differ between and within east and west wings, and the core units, even during comparable time periods. Seen from the perspective of the floor plan, the examples of Chacoan architecture suggest differentiation both within and among great houses.

This ethnographic overview documents the contemporary values of American Indians regarding Fajada Butte. The study defines which Indian tribes have traditional or historic cultural ties to Fajada Butte and Chaco Culture National Historical Park (NHP). The study was funded by the National Park Service on September 15, 1992, and was managed by the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office. The ethnographic overview is focussed on two broad issues: (1) Fajada Butte and its significance to American Indian people and (2) the traditional use of plants and their cultural significance to American Indian people. An additional goal of this study is to contribute information about to the process of general tribal -park consultation including Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. This study documented that 11 tribes and pueblos have cultural relationships with Fajada Butte and Chaco Culture NHP. American Indians feel a contemporary identification with the Fajada Butte and Chaco Culture NHP. There are three main ways for expressing this identification (1) direct descent ties, (2) tribal ties, and (3) ethnic ties. No tribal or pueblo representatives expressed knowledge of living families who are direct descendants from the people of Chaco; however, many of them stated that Chaco people were their direct ancestors. All tribes and pueblo representatives who participated in the on -site visit claimed tribal or pueblo ties to the people of Chaco. The research also was concerned with the plant life of the area both on and around Fajada Butte. This study documented the American Indian traditional use placess around Fajada Butte and elsewhere in Chaco Canyon. All Indian representatives expressed the desire that the park continues to protect these plants from disturbance and emphasized the need to have a park-wide ethnobotanical study.

No description available.

This presentation was created to discuss the findings of the report American Indians and Fajada Butte.

This presentation provides photographs to help the reader further illustrate the report American Indians and Fajada Butte.

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This study is the geochemical examination of mineral weathering and its path from hinterland, through sediment deposition and pedogenesis, to its dissolution and eventual uptake into plants or precipitation as carbonate minerals. The three papers examine the rate and character of carbonate and silicate mineral weathering over a wide range of climatic and tectonic regimes, time periods, and lithologies, and focus on very different questions. Examination of the 87Sr/86Sr ratios of architectural ponderosa pine in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico confirms a societally complex style of timber procurement from the 10th to the 12th centuries. In El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico, we measured the 87Sr/86Sr ratios in local bedrock and soils and compared them to the leaf/wood cellulose of four conifers (Pinus ponderosa, Pinus edulis, Juniperus monosperma, Juniperus scopulorum), a deciduous tree (Populus tremuloides), three shrubs (Chrysothamus nauseosus, Fallugia paradoxa, Rhus trilobata), and an annual grass (Bouteloua gracilis) and a lichen (Xanthoparmelia lineola). We found that plant 87Sr/86Sr ratios covaried with variations in plant physiognomy, life history, and rooting depth. In addition, the proportion of atmospheric dust and bedrock mineral contributions to soil water 87Sr/86Sr ratios varied predictably with landscape age and bedrock lithology. On the Himalayan floodplain, soils and paleosol silicate weathering intensities were measured along a climatic transect and through time. Overall, carbonate weathering dominates floodplain weathering. But, periods of more intense silicate weathering between 9 - 2 Ma, identified in soil profile and in the 87Sr/86Sr ratios of pedogenic carbonates, appear to be driven by changes in tectonic, rather than climatic, regime. All three papers are good examples of how 87Sr/86Sr isotopic tracer studies can shed light on pedogenic formation rates and internal processes. The complexity of each system warns against generalizations based on just one locale, one species or lithology, or a few isotopic ratios.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1934. / "Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago Libraries, Chicago, Illinois." "July 1934." Published also as the University of New Mexico bulletin, Monograph series, vol. 1, no. 1. Includes bibliographical references (p. ix-x).