Ch.5: Regional System

URBAN GENESIS AT CHACO: Case Study of the Origin of Civilizations. Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6

5.4 Regional Extension and Integration: the Road System

During the eleventh century the Chacoans built a formal road network that linked the canyon to communities in the wetter, more fertile regions around the margins of the basin. The roads were consistently nine meters (thirty feet) wide and remarkably straight. Slight adjustments were made for extreme terrain, but overall the roads maintained consistent azimuths over tens of kilometers. One evident function of the roads was for transporting resources to Chaco. Not only timber but game, stone tools, and vast quantities of ceramics were brought to the canyon: Windes estimates that 150,000 vessels were deposited in the mound at Pueblo Alto. Note that even if good clay were available, the dearth of combustible material in the central basin would have made the firing of ceramics very costly in the Chaco vicinity. There is, however, no evidence of redistribution: the Chacoans did not use their apparent regional control and central geographic position to administer a system of shifting local surpluses to other locations in need. If anything was redistributed, it would have been the people themselves. Meanwhile, material resources were only brought to the center--a pattern consistent with the Theater State model of organization.

However, even for gangs bearing ponderosa trunks, nine-meter roads are excessively wide. Marshall contends that Chacoan roads were designed as pilgrimage avenues, and that the Great North Road in particular was designed to mark Chaco as The Middle Place. Marshall bases this arguments pan-Puebloan mythology and the formal similarity of Chacoan roads to the pilgrimage paths of the Zuñis and Acomans. The Zuñian and Acoman sacred paths are virtually identical in form and relationship to hills, mountains and lakes--physical features that are considered sacred (Marshall 1991:123). The Great North Road, however, runs almost exactly north and ends at the rim of a canyon. It does not link any communities: only outlying great-houses are placed along the road, a dayÕs journey apart, apparently as way stations. Furthermore, the Great North Road is even more overbuilt: it often divides into two or four parallel paths that seem best suited to massive processions. If Chacoan cosmology is at all similar to contemporary Pueblo belief, then the advice of Jake White Cloud may reveal the intentions behind building this huge feature: "You want to understand the origins of Chaco? Look deeper. They came from the north."

Chacoan road design was also used to control and guide views. Most of the roads from the south and west converged outside the canyon and passed through South Gap, between West and South Mesas. This last road segment was aligned with Pueblo Alto and later, Pueblo del Arroyo with it. As one enters the Gap, the characteristic openness of the plateau is replaced with the visual enclosure of the canyon noted above.

Approaching from the north, one first arrives at Pueblo Alto with its remarkable vista. Proceeding on one of several roads leading south to the rim, one arrives at the top of the cliffs directly above either Pueblo Bonito or Chetro Ketl. Stephen Lekson remarks on this particular overlook in the opening passages of Great Pueblo Architecture: "Viewed from the cliffs, the ruins are tremendously impressive. Their placement, just below the platform of the canyon rim, seems designed to show the ruins at their best advantage." (Lekson 1984:1) Stein and Marshall (1991) have shown that berms, mounds, and trenching were used along the roads to obstruct and reveal views in much the same manner that the cliffs do in the canyon itself. The construction of earthworks along roads more than one hundred kilometers from the canyon suggests that the Chacoans intended to capitalize in the experiential quality of the Journey to the Center. In every Historic Pueblo society, ritual journeys are made to the cardinal shrines, hills, and mountains (Ortiz 1969; Ferguson and Hart 1985; Jake White Cloud, personal communication, 1993). The Zuñi, furthermore, made ritual treks all the way to the Pacific Ocean to obtain seawater. Perhaps the Chacoans, like the Muslims and Catholics, reorganized established practices of pilgrimage to reinforce Chaco as the ritual center, the journey's destination.