Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico was the center of a large and very complex culture that flourished in the 11th and 12th centuries before suddenly collapsing. Characterized by impressive architecture and multifaceted organization, the Chaco culture remains an enigma to archaeologists after more than a century of excavations and study.
In the early 1980s, archaeologists realized that there was more to the Chaco culture than the community in Chaco Canyon itself. Dozens of Chaco-style settlements were scattered across the San Juan Basin. Long, straight roads emanating from the canyon may have connected them into a regional polity, making the Chaco Phenomenon even more complex than anything anyone had imagined—certainly more sophisticated than any civilization north of Mexico
The outlying settlements may well be the key for understanding the Chaco Phenomenon, yet they remain little studied. University of Colorado archaeologist Catherine Cameron has made a major contribution to Chaco knowledge in this volume. She and her team spent six years excavating a Chaco outlier in Bluff, Utah, some 75 air miles from Chaco Canyon. Cameron quickly determined that the large Bluff ruin (reduced to a large rubble pile over the centuries) was indeed constructed in the Chaco style, consisting of a massive, multi-storied Great House similar to the large buildings in Chaco Canyon, a great kiva, Chaco-style roads, and other diagnostic features. With the collapse of the regional Chaco system around A.D. 1130, the Bluff Great House is abandoned, and Cameron finds a marked population decline in the entire northern San Juan region.
Cameron reports on her findings at Bluff and vicinity in a concise and readable report. It is richly illustrated with maps, drawings, and photographs that greatly enhance the text. Co-authors who worked at the site fill in many of the details. Yet this volume is much more than a report on the Bluff Great House. It is a fascinating study of how the Chaco system worked at its furthest distance from the center.
