The Abandonment of Chaco Canyon, the Mesa Verde Migrations, and the Reorganization of the Pueblo World

Factors Controlling Pre-Columbian and Early Historic Maize Productivity in the American Southwest, Part 2: The Chaco Halo, Mesa Verde, Pajarito Plateau/Bandelier, and Zuni Archaeological Regions

“…The vast majority of those living within the Chaco Halo abandoned this area during the midtwelfth-century megadrought (Judge 1989;Lekson and Cameron 1995). Mesa Verde was abandoned during the late-thirteenth-century megadrought (Varien et al 1996), and the Pajarito Plateau was abandoned during the sixteenth century (Orcutt 1991), perhaps in response to the effects of the sixteenth-century megadrought (Stahle et al 2000).…”

Cultural Identity and the Archaeological Construction of Historical Narratives: An Example from Chaco Canyon

“…(Lekson et al 1988;Lekson and Cameron 1995;Cameron 2008). Such a systemic change for the canyon community is not incompatible with the presence of immigrants and consequently a simple shift in refuse disposal is not a particularly good argument for, or against either of the competing hypotheses.…”

“…A return to higher precipitation regimes at ca. AD 1100 stanched the flow of people out of Chaco, and some subdued great house construction followed, but the canyon never regained its sociopolitical centrality and by AD 1140 was largely abandoned (Tainter 1988;Lekson and Cameron 1995;Fagan 2005).…”

Great House Communities Across the Chacoan Landscape. John Kantner and Nancy M. Mahoney, editors. 2000. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson. viii+ 192 pp. $16.95 (paper), ISBN 0- 8165-2072-0.

“…The Guadalupe great house and all of the other community structures may have witnessed periods of abandonment. Much has been written about the post-Chaco era in recent years (Cameron 1995;Cordell 1997;Roney 1996), and the Guadalupe community seemingly fits the larger northern Southwest pattern. Coarsely, one can correlate environmental and climatic change with these events, though this is not necessarily a causal explanation.…”

“…It is increasingly apparent that the rise and demise of the Chaco centers and contemporaneous outlying communities were developments of such salient importance that understanding them is key to understanding much of puebloan culture history, both leading up to and following the Chacoan florescence (Adler 1996b;Lekson 1996aLekson , 1996bLekson and Cameron 1995). Intelligent investigation of these questions is dependent on the accumula- [63] tion of fundamental data regarding the identification and distribution of great features and associated communities: How do we identify them, where do they occur, where do they not occur, and what patterned variability can we recognize among them both through time and across space?…”