Pueblo Bonito

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon

Today, we took a ranger hike through the largest complex in the park, Pueblo Bonito. This complex had over 600 rooms and 16 kivas, including 3 great kivas. At first, archeologists thought this was a large habitation, but after examining the rubble, there were far too few hearths for cooking. It appears that this complex had only 50-100 permanent residents, but given the large complex, many people most have come here for religious ceremonies or major rendezvous. This area was initially excavated by Weatherill, the same person who discovered Mesa Verde. He is a controversial figure, since he was a self-taught archeologist. He preserved a lot of artifacts giving them to a New York Museum (which has kept most of the items in storage for decades), yet he also did things like burning some of the roofing materials for heat and cooking. The oldest part of the complex has two unique rooms. In one room, Weatherill found over 100 cylindrical jars. This is amazing because only 200 have ever been found in the entire southwest. Two years ago, 3 of these jars were tested to see what they might have contained. It turns out that they held cocoa beans (chocolate). The nearest cocoa trees are over 1000 miles away, but it obviously was considered a sacred substance, just like the Mayans considered it. In another room, they found 6 bodies, buried one on top of each other. These men were over 6 feet tall, in an age where most men were 5’4”. Last year, they carbon dated the man on the bottom; he died about 850, when this complex was first built. These 6 men must have been special because they were buried with all sorts of Turquoise jewelry.
In the afternoon, we visited three other sites in the canyon. Two were great house areas in other parts of the canyon and the last was a residential area. This last pueblo was only one story tall and relatively small. But nearby, was another giant kiva. This kiva has several astronomical setups. First, it is perfectly aligned north and south, as evidenced by a night time picture we saw where it is perfectly aligned with Polaris with the stars rotating around due north (in a time when Polaris wasn’t due North). There also is a window which lights up a nitch in the kiva at summer solstice. Finally the east-west windows are perfectly aligned for the solar equinox. Chaco Canyon is a must-visit on my list.