Turquoise-for-Chocolate Trades Linked American Cultures

Cylinder jars from Chaco Canyon with cacao residue.

Trading turquoise for chocolate likely linked ancient societies in the southwestern U.S. with Mesoamerican cultures in southern Mexico and Central America.

New research reveals that the Pueblo people living in the Southwest drank a cacao-based beverage imported from Mesoamerican cultures. In fact, large numbers of people throughout Pueblo society apparently consumed cacao, from low-ranking farmers to elite residents of multistory pueblos.

“Since cacao was consumed by both Pueblo elites and nonelites, active trading for cacao must have occurred with Mesoamerican states,” says archaeologist Dorothy Washburn of the University of Pennsylvania. Pueblo groups and an ensuing Southwest society traded turquoise for Mesoamerican cacao for about five centuries, from around 900 to 1400, according to findings of Washburn’s research team.

According to Science News:

Initial evidence of cacao drinking in Chaco Canyon surprised many archaeologists, who long have assumed that cultures of the Southwest and Mesoamerica had minimal contact. Yet previous Pueblo finds in Chaco Canyon include macaw remains, copper bells and decorative items that must have come from Mesoamerica, remarks archaeologist Ben Nelson of Arizona State University in Tempe.

“To find that cacao consumption was much more widespread strengthens the case for regular exchange with populations in Mesoamerica,” Nelson says. He has argued that leaders of ancient Southwestern societies appropriated selected aspects of Mesoamerican cultures for their own purposes, perhaps to justify their power and prestige.

Other researchers have matched the turquoise from mines in New Mexico to that of turquoise found at several Mesoamerican sites, including the Maya site of Chichen Itza.

Click here for the complete article.

Great Houses Indicate Chaco Social Hierarchy

Ruins of a Chaco Great House.

Social hierarchies may have emerged within Southwestern Native American society as early as the 9th century. Researchers are using unpublished archival information and modern radiocarbon dating to do an updated archeological analysis on Pueblo mortuary sites within the Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico.

Chaco Canyon is famous for its unusual architecture and the dense packing of at least 15 multistory masonry pueblos, known as "great houses." The locale has long been considered a remarkable example of multifaceted culture in the prehistoric New World, but researchers remain divided over whether Chaco gave rise to chiefly societies, or if the society and buildings were cooperatively constructed.

Patterns of human remains and other artifacts found within the great house mortuaries suggests that the long-observed disparity in burial numbers between small houses and great houses in the canyon may be due to the presence of social hierarchies ~ suggesting that only Chaco elites were buried in great houses, where their status was legitimized through ritual links to ancestors and cosmological forces.

Click here for the PhysOrg.com article.

Chacoan "Elites" Ruled Over Chimney Rock

Chacoan ruins at Chimney Rock.

New findings from the Chimney Rock archaeological site in southern Colorado suggest that elite members of the Chaco culture dined on elk and deer, catered to them by commoners living in the valley below.

Colorado University Professor Steve Lekson, who is directing the excavation, said the royalty at Chimney Rock ~ an "outlier" of the Chaco Canyon culture centered in northern New Mexico that ruled the Southwest from about A.D. 850 to 1150 ~ were likely tended to through a complex social, economic and political network.

"While our analysis has only begun, there might have been two different groups at Chimney Rock ~ those that built it, and the elites that inhabited it," said Lekson.

Chimney Rock is one of scores of Chaco outliers in the Southwest and perhaps its most dramatic, seated at 7,600 feet above the San Juan Basin. The site is marked by a pair of twin rock spires, and harbors a Chacoan-like "Great House" and great kiva that some archaeologists believe were built as part of a lunar observatory.

Click here for the complete University of Colorado article.

Pueblo May Be Linked to Lunar Standstill

Remains of the Great House Pueblo at Chimney Rock.

Archaeologists are uncovering evidence that may explain the significance of the nearly thousand-year-old Great House Pueblo high atop Colorado’s Chimney Rock Archaeological Area in the San Juan National Forest.

"It's a chance to have a new look at this site, because archaeology has really advanced in the last few decades," San Juan National Forest Archaeologist Julie Coleman tells the Durango (Colorado) Herald.

The site has possible ties to the major lunar standstill, an astronomical phenomenon marking the end of the moon's northern migration cycle. Every 18.6 years from the vantage point of the Great House, the moon rises within a narrow window of sky framed by the rock spires that give Chimney Rock its name.

The most recent lunar standstill took place from 2004 to 2008, and the next opportunity will not occur until about 2022.

"Based on research from the 1970s, we do think it was constructed in time for the major lunar standstill in 1076, and we think it was rebuilt in time for the next lunar standstill in the 1090s," Coleman said.

Click here for the Durango Herald article.