RE: Tracking the Anasazi - Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Thank you for transporting me back to Chaco Canyon...

Off to my archives to find my photos taken there nearly 20 years ago...And to 
massage the notion of another trip!

Is it true that until the late 19th Century, Pueblo Bonito was considered the 
largest man-made structure in North America? I heard or read that somewhere... 



> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:11:39 -0800
> From: markbohrer@xxxxxxx
> To: leica@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; digitalusersgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; paw@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Tracking the Anasazi - Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
> 
> The American Southwest is a dry place, filled with sand and sage, cholla
> and sandstone. Indians hunted, gathered, and dry-farmed there for
> centuries. Around 300 CE or so, someone decided to dig circular holes
> near their farm fields and start roofing them over. It was a lot warmer
> than sleeping in the open, and more convenient than caves - they weren't
> always around anyway.
> 
> By 700, those pit houses had grown into small adobe pueblos of
> rectangular rooms in front of the circular chamber, a true community.
> That circular chamber morphed into a kiva, the focus of ceremonies
> shared by the whole pueblo. A Great Kiva mya have looked like this inside:
> http://tinyurl.com/oszh6
> 
> Near the center of the San Juan Basin in Chaco Canyon, someone gathered
> enough influence by 850 to start building a D-shaped structure of
> sandstone bricks, quarried from the Canyon's mesas. If you've been to
> Chaco, you know there aren't any big trees there. Logs for building
> supports had to be cut and transported by muscle power from the Chuska
> Mountains, many miles west of Chaco.
> 
> The Canyon is an unlikely place for a ceremonial center - less than 9
> inches of annual rainfall, only a few deer and rabbits to hunt,
> turquoise for ceremonial beads and statues at mines far to the east.
> 
> But there are other reasons for any location. The jungle seems like an
> inconvenient place for the ancient Khmer capitol of Angkor Wat, but it
> was where the Khmer rulers ended up after moving several times. Those
> rulers compelled slaves to quarry sandstone many miles away in
> Cambodia's Kulen Hills and transport it to build Angkor's temples. For
> Khmer kings, temple-building seemed like the best way to gain merit,
> build positive karma, and ensure a good connection with ruling
> ancestors. It was hard on slaves.
> 
> Chaco's central location and its east-west and southern sight lines may
> have helped it become a ceremonial center. We don't know.
> By early 1100, Pueblo Bonito had become the 4-storied D-shaped building
> uncovered in the late 1800s. Its walls were made of massive cut and
> dressed sandstone bricks, with long-gone plaster veneer:
> http://tinyurl.com/25rmae
> 
> Pueblo Bonito and several other Great Houses must have been an
> impressive sight for pilgrims descending the Jackson Stairs from Pueblo
> Alto into the canyon after a trek along the Great North Road.
> The Jackson Stairs:
> http://tinyurl.com/dabsec
> New Alto on the Great North Road.:
> http://tinyurl.com/gpzq8
> 
> But something happened - the dream began to fade in the 1200s. By 1350,
> the original residents had burned Pueblo Bonito's Great Kiva, bricked up
> doorways, and left:
> Burned Great Kiva at Pueblo Bonito:
> http://tinyurl.com/kanv9
> 
> No more pilgrims walked the Great North Road. Everybody gradually
> migrated out to the Hopi mesas, Zuni, the Rio Grande pueblos, Acoma. The
> Chaco System ended.
> 
> ** Today, you can still see the structures first excavated by Richard
> Wetherill in 1896:
> http://tinyurl.com/7fdgod
> 
> For more on the solar and lunar astronomy of Fajada Butte and the
> Chacoan Great Houses, see work by Anna Sofaer and the Solstice Project.
> Here's Fajada Butte:
> http://tinyurl.com/lpk2p
> 
> For discussions of the ceremonial and political aspects of the Chaco
> System, see Stephen Lekson's "The Chaco Meridian" and his other work.
> Kendrick Frazier's "People of Chaco" (3rd edition) gives a good
> introduction to the what and whys of Chaco. Frank McNitt's "Anasazi:
> Richard Wetherill" is a good biography about the discoverer of Mesa
> Verde and first excavator of Chaco.
> 
> If you're going, be ready for the dirt road into Chaco. The first 10
> miles from Nageezi are paved, but it's another ten miles of dirt (dry)
> or muck (wet and icy) after that. You can enter from Grants to the
> south, but that road isn't any better. I like winter in Chaco because
> it's not too cold, and the tourists are mostly gone. Summers see
> 100-degree temperatures, and there aren't any gas stations or cafeterias
> at Chaco or on the way in. All you see are occasional hogans or flocks
> of Navaho sheep. Watch for the windmill near the Canyon:
> http://tinyurl.com/835qc2
> 
> Once you get there, you'll need good hiking boots to navigate trails -
> if there've been recent storms, running shoes won't do it:
> http://tinyurl.com/854usd
> 
> I used a Leica M8 with 28mm, 35mm and 50mm lenses, plus Canon EOS 1D mk
> II with 16-35mm and 70-200mm lenses to photograph the ruins in December
> 2008. Pictures from earlier visits were taken with EOS 1D (original) and
> 10D, or scanned from film (E-6 ISO 64, 100, and 400 - Nikon N90 and F5).
> A tilt-shift or PC lens would be handy too (I forgot to bring my 24mm
> TS-E lens the day we went to Chaco). If you want to capture the moon
> through a ruin window at dusk, a tripod is a must.
> 
> All comments welcome.
> 
> Mark Bohrer
> Mountain and Desert Photography
> www.mountain-and-desert.com
> Active winter travel at its best
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Mark Bohrer, MSEE
> www.precision-copywriting.com
> I help make clients filthy stinking rich
> 
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