How do civilizations begin?
This question has been debated for several hundred years by some of the best-known anthropologists and social thinkers, including Lewis Henry Morgan, Friedrich Engels, Max Weber, Julian Steward, and Paul Wheatley. Terms have been defined, and the question refined, but the same essential problem persists:
There are at least two, and probably twelve independent occurrences of "Urban Genesis" in world history.
In each case a non-urban, village-level culture went through a series
of structural changes that resulted in a complex, politically-organized
civilization. Each instance looks very different, as different as Shang
China and the Olmec Culture in southern Mexico. But the structural
changes that each culture underwent are similar enough to suggest that a
single process governed primary urbanization wherever it occurred.
That is the good news. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to reconstruct processes of cultural change from fragmentary evidence. Furthermore, cultures that urbanize tend to obliterate traces of the intermediate, transitional phases that resulted in large-scale civilizations. Furthermore, independent urban genesis is no longer possible, since every human society today is in contact with, if not overrun by, urban civilization.
This is why the Chaco Culture is so valuable as a case study of urban origins. It is a rare instance of a culture that collapsed in the midst of becoming an urban civilization independent of outside influence. Tree-ring and carbon dates indicate that this site--this whole region--was abandoned very quickly after the society collapsed. There was very little scavenging of building materials, and the area is very dry, leaving a tremendous amount of material intact.
The pages in this website are a revised edition of the Master's Thesis I submitted to the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley in May of 1994. As a student of Urban Design I had intended to study the architecture and site planning of the Chaco Culture, to better understand the urban design heritage in North America. But once I began studying this enormous complex of ruins, I had to address the more compelling, underlying questions: what were these buildings? And why locate them here?
The answers I found are strange and fascinating. I hope you enjoy
this study.
Chapter 1: Theoretical Model
Chapter 2: Pueblo Architecture
Chapter 3: Pre-Chaco
Architecture
Chapter 4: Chaco Architecture
Chapter 5: Regional System
Chapter 6: Conclusions
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