The Chaco Culture consists of Chaco Canyon with its dozen or so magnificent Great Houses plus more than 200 outlying sites in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah spread over an area roughly 100 by 90 miles. These outlying sites, or Chaco outliers, consist of Chaco Great House communities, isolated Great Kivas, long straight roads, shrines, rock art, and astronomical sites. Taken together scholars know this as the “greater Chaco landscape,” and that is the subject of this volume.
The work is a collection of 17 essays and videos by leading Chaco scholars and Native American contributors. It emerged from a seminar at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado held in August 2017 and focuses on two main themes. First, the authors are concerned with the impact of energy development – oil, natural gas, and coal — in the greater Chaco landscape that threatens the cultural resources. Second is a focus on the greater Chaco landscape and how the various elements interacted over great distances in a very harsh environment between about A.D. 850 and 1130.
The San Juan Basin is not only home to one of America’s great native cultural phenomenon; it also contains vast deposits of oil, natural gas, and coal. There are more than 40,000 oil and gas wells in the basin, plus miles of pipelines, service roads, and transmission lines. Two massive coal mines provide fuel for giant, on-site power plants. Land ownership is a checkerboard of federal, state, private, and tribal, each with their own management priorities.
The authors make their case for the need to protect the cultural resources from energy development and to develop management policies that transcend land ownership. They also make a strong case for looking at the whole Chacoan landscape and how the various elements could have worked independently and together.
The printed version of this study is richly illustrated with 131 photos, maps, and tables. It is also available on the publishers Web site for free, and there is also a series of videos that complement the text including reflections by Native Americans. The Greater Chacoan Landscape is an innovative addition to Chacoan scholarship that comes at a time when these priceless cultural resources are in need of better efforts of preservation and understanding. – Mark Michel
