[ANTH 3347: North American Archaeology
Instructor:  Dr. Steve Black, Fall 2015
Assignment:  Research Paper
Date Submitted:  December 2, 2015                                                                            

LEKSON’S CHACO MERIDIAN: ARCHAEOLOGICAL

FACT OR FICTION? 

John T. McCoppin III

John T. McCoppin III, Student, Anthropology Department, Texas State University,San Marcos, TX 78666 (jtm122@txstate.edu)

LEKSON’S CHACO MERIDIAN: ARCHAEOLOGICAL

FACT OR FICTION?

            Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (Chaco) has a unique and interesting history.  The prehistoric ruins located in the canyon and surrounding region have been the source of many archaeological investigations over the last 100 years.  These investigations have produced several models that attempt to explain the culture and history of the prehistoric people that once inhabited Chaco.  There have been models based on Chaco being a trade center, pilgrimage center, and a redistribution center.  In a more standard model, Chaco is seen as a traditional pueblo agricultural settlement.  In 1999, Stephen H. Lekson proposed a new model in his book The Chaco Meridian.  His model is polity based, and identified Chaco as a secondary city-state whose elite inhabitants, after building a capital at Chaco, moved their capital first to Aztec, New Mexico, and later to Paquimé, Mexico (Lekson 1999).  The foundation of Lekson’s  model is the claim that these elites used symbols (such as cardinal alignment) and architectural forms to link these places, and that all three capitals were purposefully built on the same meridian.  Lekson’s model, while imaginative and thought provoking, paints with a broad brush, and a key element of the model is not supported by the archaeological evidence.

Chaco Canyon:  Setting and Archaeological Investigations

Chaco is located within the arid Colorado Plateaus physiographic province at an approximate latitude 36 degrees north, 108 degrees west (Cordell 2014: 42-43, 55; Lekson 2006:8).  This province is characterized by large plateaus consisting of nearly horizontal formations of sedimentary rock, with little natural plant cover or soil development.  At Chaco, local sandstones were used by the Ancestral Puebloans to construct their monumental stone structures.  During the time that Chaco was inhabited, rainfall regimes in the area were highly variable, as evidenced by sedimentation studies that show that parts of Chaco Wash were being downcut at the same time other parts were being filled.  This harsh, dry environment facilitated good preservation of archaeological artifacts and has been the setting for over a hundred years of archaeological investigations.

The first major excavations at Chaco were undertaken by the Hyde Exploring Expedition.  They began in May of 1896 and were sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History (Lister 1981:23-40).  Under the field supervision of George H. Pepper, foreman Richard Wetherill and his crew worked at Pueblo Bonito for four seasons, shipping massive amounts of material culture (including 14 human skeletons) to the museum in New York by freight car.  The Hyde Exploring Expedition excavated a total of 190 rooms and kivas in Pueblo Bonito.

The next major work at Chaco began in 1921, backed by the National Geographic Society.  This expedition was led by Neil M. Judd, who developed a five year plan to further explore Pueblo Bonito, as well as Pueblo del Arroyo and other ancillary sites (Lister 1981:67-90).  During six summer field seasons (1921-1927), Judd excavated 138 ground floor rooms, 22 small kivas, and two Great Kivas at Pueblo Bonito, and 44 ground floor rooms and 7 kivas at Pueblo del Arroyo.  Working with Judd was Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., who returned to Chaco in 1927 after he joined the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology.  Roberts cleared 18 pit house dwellings and a large kiva at a site he named Shabik’eschchee Village.  Roberts interpreted the kiva he excavated to be a forerunner of the Great Kivas found at Chaco.  Because of its size and features, Roberts saw it as a place where participants from the entire community or from several communities held important ceremonies.

In the 1930s, the School of American Research and the University of New Mexico excavated two Great Kivas at Chaco under the direction of Edgar L. Hewett (Lister 1981:105-129).  The University of New Mexico continued to hold field schools in Chaco until 1947.  In 1952, the National Park Service began its first major research effort at Kin Kletso.  Kin Kletso was much smaller than Pueblo Bonito, containing 55 ground floor rooms and five kivas.  Six burials were excavated during this research, each with pottery vessels and other burial furnishings.  Twenty years after the work at Kin Kletso, a new group of men and women, armed with new analytical techniques and theories, began work at Chaco.  This group was the Chaco Center, also known as the Chaco Project, and was a joint undertaking by the National Park Service and the University of New Mexico.  Among the many young archaeologists who joined the Chaco Project was Stephen H. Lekson.

Lekson and The Chaco Meridian

Lekson has a long and impressive history with Chaco (Lekson 2004:24-28).  He began work at Chaco when he was hired for the Chaco Project excavation of Pueblo Alto.  He worked at Chaco as an archaeologist for ten years, from May of 1976 to May of 1986.  He introduced the term “Downtown Chaco” in 1981 and was project manager of the Chaco Synthesis, 1997-2004.  Lekson has enjoyed a career filled with honors and awards, and has been a prolific writer on many topics related to Southwestern archaeology in general, and Chaco specifically (Lekson: 2013).  Nothing, however, generated the publicity and reactions, both positive and negative, than his two editions of The Chaco Meridian (Lekson 1999, 2015).  In The Chaco Meridian, Lekson proposes a view of Pueblo prehistory that includes three secondary city-state level “capitals”: Chaco, Aztec, and Paquimé.  According to Lekson, an elite group built these capitals in sequential order, moving their capital first north from Chaco to Aztec, then south from Aztec to Paquimé.  This claim of a final move from Aztec to Paquimé has been the subject of controversy and criticism and is the focus of this paper.¹

Criticism of Lekson’s Model

Lekson’s first edition of The Chaco Meridian was controversial, so much so that some wondered if it might be a hoax (Whittlesey 2000:360).  In its aftermath, scholarly criticism followed.  Paul E. Minnis offered a thoughtful, though somewhat muted, criticism of elements of Lekson’s model at The Amerind Foundation seminar in the fall of 2010 (Heitman and Plog 2015:308-309).  His presentation noted three major differences between Chaco and Paquimé: (1) Paquimé had a large domestic population, while Chaco did not, (2) Paquimé was a single community, while Chaco was a cluster of Greathouses, and (3) Chaco had an impressive number of Great Kivas, while Paquimé had a completely different public ritual architecture.  Minnis notes that, while the Great Kivas of Chaco exhibit a standardized form, the ball courts, platforms, mounds, and feasting ovens at Paquimé exhibit a great diversity, especially in indoor ritual spaces.  Minnis has done extensive work at Casas Grandes and Paquimé (Whalen and Minnis 2001:150, 204-207).  When he did a settlement complexity analysis and assigned numerical scores to different architectural features, kivas were not even mentioned.  Whalen and Minnis’ work sets forth a view of Casas Grandes that is different from the one developed by Charles Di Peso a generation earlier.  In fairness, some of the differences noted by Minnis are beneficial to Lekson’s model, such as his revised chronology and discounting of Mesoamerican influence.  In Appendix B of his second edition, Lekson points out that he has no reason to question Minnis’ grouping and selection of available tree rings at Paquimé and, in fact, uses them in his own analysis (Lekson 2015:185-191).

When David A. Phillips leveled criticism at Lekson’s model (poster presentation at the 65^th Annual Meeting, Society for American Archaeology, Philadelphia, April 6, 2000), he was much more detailed and direct (Phillips 2002).  Phillips chides Lekson for presenting only evidence that supports the specifics of his model, stating “I don’t deny Lekson’s right to advocate an idea but archaeology is better served when each author is also his own worst critic” (Phillips 2002:1).  Phillips tediously lays out several areas where he claims Lekson’s ideas fall short.  He first argues that Lekson’s claims and analysis purporting to prove that Chaco, Aztec, and Paquimé all lie within a two degree tolerance range of a single meridian, defined by the center of their first capital at Chaco Canyon, are incorrect.  As an example, he contends that Aztec is 9.9 degrees off the meridian, well outside Lekson’s two degree tolerance range (Phillips 2002:5).  Phillips next argues that Lekson’s model involves a 717m trek by an elite group that included men, women, and children that was not possible or probable when you consider studies concerning the limits relating to how far prehistoric people could travel carrying a food supply.  He also takes issue with Lekson’s contention that the elites bypassed and did not settle in the Mimbres Valley because it was despoiled.  Phillips calculated that the Valley would have had 145 years, or seven generations, to recover after the heavy Mimbres occupation (Phillips 2002:20).  Phillips also criticizes Lekson’s Casas Grandes Valley chronology, finding it troublesome at best and impossible at worst.

Phillips final area of criticism involves Lekson’s methodology of listing shared traits (architectural detail and items of material culture) without discussing or explaining the ways in which the areas differed.  To counter Lekson’s claimed list of traits that Chaco, Aztec, and Paquimé shared (t-shaped doors, colonnades, bi-walls, stone disk “foundations”, and room wide platforms), Phillips notes that Paquimé has many traits that Chaco and Aztec do not (rooms with unusual floor plans, ball courts, domestic water system, and stone lined drains).  More importantly, for purposes of this paper, Phillips acknowledges that Chaco and Aztec had circular Great Kivas while Paquimé did not.  The absence of Great Kivas at Paquimé fractures the very foundation of Lekson’s model, and the model fails for this reason alone.

The Kiva Question

Great Kivas were monumental elements of the Chaco Greathouses (Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006).  An early Chaco Greathouse was typically associated with a Great Kiva at least 10m in diameter.  These large kivas were important displays of power, and were linked to public functions at the community level.  Great Kivas shared a suite of features, including a central firepit, subfloor ventilators, and low benches encircling the interior wall at floor level (Crown and Wills 2003).  Great Kivas were a long-lived architectural form that appeared in the Chaco area as early as the A.D. 600s and occurred through the late A.D. 1200s (Lipe 2006).  After about A.D. 1300, Great Kivas survived only in the northern Rio Grande area.  They certainly did not survive or exist in the south, at Paquimé.

Lekson has flatly stated that Puebloan and Anasazi archaeologists are “obsessed with kivas” and sees the kiva as “ill-defined” (Lekson 1999a:87).  This attitude is clearly evident throughout both editions of his book, so much so that Lekson might be considered “kiva phobic”.

            It is indisputable that Chaco and Aztec had Great Kivas.  Not just ordinary Great Kivas (like you might find at a Chaco outlier), but extra-large, circular Great Kivas, prominently located as visible displays of power.  Paquimé had no circular Great Kivas, not a single one.  In fact, Paquimé had no kivas at all.  In the first edition of his book, Lekson included drawings of what purported to be four Great Kivas: one at Chaco and one at Aztec (both circular), one at Mimbres and one at Paquimé (both rectangular).  The last sentence of the text contained in the figure with the drawings states: “The single candidate Great Kiva at Paquimé (Unit 11 Room 38) is rectangular, incorporated into the House of the Serpent” (Lekson 1999:Figure 3.3).  The in-text reference to figure 3.3 states, when discussing the layout at Paquimé, that “The central building was surrounded by a remarkable mix of Mesoamerican and Southwestern public and ceremonial monuments: ball courts, great kivas² (Unit 11, Room 38, see fig. 3.3; Lekson in press e), platforms, effigy mounds.” (Lekson 1999:72).  Lekson cannot have his cake and eat it too.  Either there is a single candidate Great Kiva or there are multiple Great Kivas at Paquimé.  The second edition does not clear up this discrepancy.  In the second edition, Lekson deletes Figure 3.3, but still claims there are “Great Kivas (unit 11, Room 38)” at Paquimé (Lekson 2015:63).³

Lekson bases his claim that Paquimé had Great Kivas on his interpretation of Di Peso’s findings at House of the Serpent in Paquimé (Lekson 1999a).⁴  While ignoring the absence of traditional Great Kiva elements, he casually opines that a central cache in the Room 38 of Unit 11 might be a central hearth and that another small pit is well positioned for a sipapu, even though it is hemispherical and adobe lined.  He sees significance in what he calls “kiva-related mural art.”⁵  Di Peso did not see the drawings as having ceremonial significance, identifying them as the “doodlings” of a young macaw tender who had turned Room 38 into his residence with macaw pens located on top of the structure (Di Peso et al. 1974:4:512).  Lekson also cites the size of Unit 11, Room 38, and compares it to Mogollon great kivas.  Unit 11, Room 38 at Paquimé was nowhere near the size of the Chaco and Aztec Great Kivas, nor could it facilitate anywhere near the number of people they did.

Another flaw in Lekson’s reasoning is found in his discussions of sandstone disks.  While citing the massive sandstone disks (which, at Chaco and Aztec, were found only in Great Kivas) as evidence of Paquimé linkage, he wholly fails to address a glaring inconsistency: the disks were not found in Unit 11, Room 38 at Paquimé, which one would expect if Lekson’s claims were true.  Finally, Lekson does not address the chronology issues associated with Room 38 (from tree ring dates) or its early transition to domestic use.  His conclusions about Unit 11, Room 38, while imaginative, are not compelling.  As is his tendency, Lekson picks a few select portions of the data and then uses these bits and pieces to make great leaps in logic.

Conclusion

Lekson’s The Chaco Meridian is entertaining reading.  This is partly due to his casual style, which often intriguing (“The Grin Remained” equals dentition in Lekson’s world), and at other times insulting (referring to the Chaco elite as “Major Dudes”) (Lekson 2015:93-94).  It is also entertaining because of its substance.  Lekson fortifies his theories with many years of solid experience in the Southwest and an imposing intellect.  Readers face a barrage of substantive theories and claims; unfortunately, there is often little or no archaeological evidence to back them up.  Such is the case with Lekson’s claim of a final move by the Chaco elite to Paquimé.  While spending many pages discussing t-shaped doors, colonnades, bi-walls, tri-walls, sandstone disks, and room-wide platforms, he artfully dodges the absence of Great Kivas at Paquimé.  Paquimé’s lack of this feature — that was so clearly dominant in the rigid planning and execution of Chaco and Aztec — casts more than a doubt over Lekson’s theory.  It is a deadly blow.  Perhaps in a third edition, Lekson will proudly report that mDNA links Paquimé to Chaco and Aztec.  However, based on the archaeological evidence that exists today, that work would be fiction.

References Cited

 Cordell, Linda S. And Maxine E. McBrinn
2012  Archaeology of the Southwest.  3rd ed.  Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.

 Crown, Patricia L. and W. H. Wills
2003  Modifying Pottery and Kivas at Chaco: Pentimento, Restoration, or Renewal.  American Antiquity 68(3): 511-532.

Di Peso, Charles C.
1974  Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Grand Chichimeca, 3 vols.  DragoonNorthland Press, Flagstaff, Arizona.

 Di Peso, Charles C., John B. Rinaldo, and Gloria Fenner
1974 Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Grand Chichimeca, 4 vols. Dragoon Northland Press, Flagstaff, Arizona.

Herr, Sarah A.
2001  Beyond Chaco: Great Kiva Communities on the Mogollon Rim Frontier.  University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona.

Lekson, Stephen H.
1999  The Chaco Meridian: Centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest.  Altamira Press, Walnut Creek, California.

 1999a  Was Casas a Pueblo? In The Casas Grandes World, edited by Curtis F. Schaafsma and Carroll L. Riley, pp. 84-92.  University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah.

2004  Architecture: The Central Matter of Chaco Canyon. In In Search of Chaco: NewApproaches to an Archaeological Enigma, edited by David Grant Nobles, pp. 22-31.  School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

2006  Chaco Matters:  An Introduction.  In The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-Century Pueblo Regional Center, Edited by Stephen H. Lekson, pp. 3-44.  School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 2013  Stephen H. Lekson CV, University of Colorado Boulder.  Electronic document,http://anthropology.colorado.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/LeksonCVMarch2013.pdf, accessed November 8, 2015.

 2015  The Chaco Meridian: One Thousand Years of Political and Religious Power in theAncient Southwest.  Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland.

Lipe, William D.2006
Notes From the North.  In The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-CenturyPueblo Regional Center, Edited by Stephen H. Lekson, pp. 261-31.  School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 Lister, Robert H., and Florence G. Lister
1981  Chaco Canyon.  University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

 Minnis, Paul E.
2015  Looking North Toward Chaco With Awe and Envy….Mostly.  Chaco Revisited: New Research on the Prehistory of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.  Edited by Carrie C. Heitman and Steve Plog, pp. 304-321.  University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona.

 Plog, Stephen
2015  Understanding Chaco: Past, Present and Future.  Chaco Revisited: New Research onthe Prehistory of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.  Edited by Carrie C. Heitman and Steve Plog, pp. 304-321.  University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona.

Phillips, David A.
2002  The Chaco Meridian: A Skeptical Analysis.  In Mogollon Archaeology: Collected Papers From the Eleventh Mogollon Conference, 20^th Anniversary Volume, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 189-214. COAS Publishing and Research, Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Whalen, Michael E., and Paul E. Minnis
2001  Casas Grandes and Its Hinterland.  First Printing. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona.

Whittlesey, Stephanie M.
2000  Review of The Chaco Meridian: Centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest.  Journal of Field Archaeology 27:359-364.

 Wilshusen, Richard H. and Ruth M. Van Dyke
2006  Chaco’s Beginnings.  In The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-CenturyPueblo Regional Center, Edited by Stephen H. Lekson, pp. 211-259.  School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Notes

1.  There are a number of other aspects of Lekson’s books (and the model they propose) that deserve discussion and comment, but are beyond the limited scope of this paper. For example, Lekson’s failure to pursue targeted research during the 15-year period between the first and second editions of his books.  Use of modern analytical tools and a multidisciplinary approach could, in all probability, conclusively prove or disprove the model.  At the 2010 Amerind Foundation seminar, which focused on Chaco research, Stephen Plog noted the scarcity of intensive research that focuses on specific dimensions of data to evaluate proposed models and the remarkable potential that lies in museum collections (Plog 2015:12, 14).  Use of modern techniques like mDNA and stable isotopes might determine if the elite burials at the three capitals are indeed related.  Lekson acknowledges this could very well be the case in his second edition (Lekson 2015:94).

2. Lekson is not consistent in his use of terms. In some places, he refers to “Great Kivas” while in others he uses “great kivas”.  One reviewer noted that, on a technical level, his work was flawed and filled with typographical errors; perhaps this is an example (Whittlesey 2000:362).

3. It is interesting that, nine pages later, he hedges his bets and proclaims “Chaco and Aztec had kivas; Paquimé had ball courts”, seemingly abandoning his claim that Paquimé had Great Kivas (Lekson 2015:72). This is another example of Lekson’s habit of haphazardly interjecting random thoughts and theories.

4.  In the first edition of The Chaco Meridian, Lekson specifically cites this article in the text on page 72 “(Unit 11, Room 38, see fig. 3.3; Lekson in press e)”, while in the second edition, he lists the article in his references, but does not cite it in the text.

5.  Lekson cites two Di Peso figures in support of this contention, namely, Figure 24-5 and Figure 30-5. Unfortunately, Figure 24-5 is of wall drawings in Room 36-11, not Room 38-11 (Di Peso 1974:5:505).