Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0001-8231-4887
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
Spring 5-19-2019
Keywords
Aztec Ruins; Chaco Canyon; New Mexico; landscape archaeology; materiality; new materialism; Ancestral Puebloan; Southwest; ceramic; architecture
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Anthropology
First Advisor
Ruth M. Van Dyke
Second Advisor
Randall H. McGuire
Third Advisor
Siobhan M. Hart
Subject Heading(s)
Aztec Ruins; Chaco Canyon; New Mexico; landscape archaeology; materiality; new materialism; Ancestral Puebloan; Southwest; ceramic; architecture; Anthropology; Archaeological Anthropology
Abstract
Between 900 and 1140 CE, people at Chaco Canyon and throughout its region built multistory monumental structures with hundreds of rooms, known as great houses. This dissertation reports on recent archaeological testing on one such great house, the Aztec North great house at Aztec Ruins National Monument.
I argue that Aztec North’s occupation represents an early, transitional period, as people previously not involved in the Chaco world made choices that increasingly brought them into Chaco’s orbit and changed their way of life forever. The structure represents a remarkable architectural experiment in large-scale adobe construction, one that likely was not terribly successful but that might have been an inspiration for generations after.
The two main strands of data I report here, the architecture and the artifact assemblage, each tell a very different story. The artifact assemblage is one entirely typical of a Chacoan great house fully absorbed in the network of trade that characterized the Chacoan world. The architecture, however, suggests a more complicated site biography, with some aspects that seem entirely Chacoan, and a few striking elements that are not at all characteristic of Chacoan construction. Drawing on theories of social complexity, landscape archaeology and materiality, I argue that this great house was a site of rapid transition and of a community drawn into the Chacoan world in very short order, and perhaps with unintended consequences.
Recommended Citation
Turner, Michelle I. 2019 Becoming Chacoan: The Archaeology of the Aztec North Great House. Ph.D. Dissertation, , Binghamton University.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Appendix 2: Ceramic Data
Appendix 4 Lithic data.xlsx (93 kB)
Appendix 4: Lithic Data
Appendix 6 Archaeobotanical data.xlsx (23 kB)
Appendix 6: Archaeobotanical Data
Appendix 8 Faunal data.xlsx (22 kB)
Appendix 8: Faunal Data
Supplemental C14 Results Table.xlsx (12 kB)
Supplemental Material: C14 Results Table