Since its rediscovery in the 19th century, archaeologists and others have struggled to make sense of this complex of 12 great apartment-like buildings and associated structures located in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico in the seeming middle of nowhere. Generation after generation has hypothesized about how the buildings came to be in such a desolate place. According to Ruth Van Dyke, after 150 years of inquiry we still have more questions than answers.
Van Dyke is an outstanding member of a new generation of Chaco scholars that are employing innovative interpretations based on recent knowledge to help us understand this perplexing phenomena. In The Chaco Experience Van Dyke examines Chaco culture from the point of view of landscape, spatial experience, sociopolitical complexity, and ideology. It is where it is because Chaco Canyon was the center of the ancient Puebloan world.
Drawing heavily on the views of modern Pueblo Indians, the likely descendants of some of the Chacoans, the author rejects some of the new, more creative interpretations of Chaco organization and seems to conclude that the center was a product of the periphery. She believes that Pueblo people from many places began to gather in Chaco Canyon to carry out periodic agricultural rituals as early as the 9th century, and “Gatherings gradually increased in size as more communities began to participate.” Only near the end in the 12th century did the canyon take on its majestic qualities. It was the ideal place at the center of the Puebloan universe to conduct their most important rituals.
Her interpretation of the Chocoan worldview is deduced from archaeology, ethnography, and phenomenology. It is concerned with the themes of sacred geography, visibility, movement, memory, and cosmology. Van Dyke analyzes the meanings and experience of moving through this landscape to illuminate Chacoan beliefs and social relationships. The Chaco Experience is an original and provocative study of one of ancient America’s great enigmas.
