Pueblo Bonito Center of the Chacoan World

by Neitzel, Jill E.

• ISBN13: 9781588341310
• ISBN10: 1588341313
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-17
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books

Summary

Pueblo Bonito is the largest and most famous ruin in New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Built by the ancestral Puebloan people some 1,000 years ago, the ruin testifies to one of the oldest and most complex societies ever discovered in North America. Study of the large corpus of data continues to generate new ideas about the people who lived their and their way of life. This extensively illustrated volume commemorates the recent centennial of the first large-scale excavations at Pueblo Bonito, with leading experts writing on various aspects of the site, including its setting, construction sequence and labor requirements, possible astronomical orientations and related rituals, and burials. The book probes deeply for answers to these and other perplexing questions about Pueblo Bonito and its people.

Author Biography

Jill E. Neitzel is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Delaware. She is the editor of Great Towns and Regional Polities in the Prehistoric American Southwest and Southeast.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
List of Tables	xi
List of Contributors	xiii
Preface	xv
Three Questions about Pueblo Bonito	1	(9)
Jill E. Neitzel
The Siting of Pueblo Bonito	10	(4)
Anne Lawrason Marshall
This Old House Construction and Abandonment at Pueblo Bonito	14	(19)
Thomas C. Windes
Reconstructing Pueblo Bonito	33	(28)
John R. Stein
Dabney Ford
Richard Friedman
Astronomy and Ritual in Chaco Canyon	61	(11)
James D. Farmer
Construction Labor at Pueblo Bonito	72	(8)
Mary P. Metcalf
Pueblo Bonito When a House is Not a Home	80	(14)
Wendy Bustard
The Burials of Pueblo Bonito	94	(13)
Nancy J. Akins
Artifact Distributions at Pueblo Bonito	107	(20)
Jill E. Neitzel
Artifacts from Pueblo Bonito One Hundred Years of Interpretation	127	(16)
Frances Joan Mathien
The Organization, Function, and Population of Pueblo Bonito	143	(8)
Jill E. Neitzel
References	151	(16)
Index	167