Time and Patience: the Most Powerful Warriors. Part One

    It has only been in the last 75 years that we have made time a commodity by wearing wrist watches.  Prior to that, those who could afford to wore pocket watches, cumbersome yet useful items once the owner modified his clothing to accommodate storage.  Before these inventions, time was measured in days or months and was seen as an enabler instead of our present day view of time as an external, unseen force showing us our limitations and failures.

    A thousand years ago in the Four Corners Region of the American southwest, time was experienced as a facilitator and an all-encompassing personal encounter.  From the very beginning, these ancient ones were in search of time itself - their mythology stories available to us today claim that in the time after entering this world and before they occupied Chaco Canyon, the Ancestral Puebloans were in a constant state of migration.  They moved in a south by southeastern direction using wooden staffs to measure their travel against a certain star that was only visible at certain times of the year.  Finally, when they reached Chaco Canyon they found a physical manifestation of time on earth.  

Penasco Blanco looking East into Chaco Canyon (Author's Collection, copyright 2019)

    Only recently with our computers and space-based telescopes have we determined what these stone-aged people knew with sticks and naked-eye star-gazing: Chaco Canyon is a calendrical station which is naturally aligned for calculating the 19 year lunar cycle.  To confirm (and ultimately  celebrate) this, Chacoans built redundant observatories for anticipating multiple astronomical dates which were important to them, their religion and their way of life.  Simultaneously, they developed their culture around physical infrastructure that re-enforced their connection to the cosmos.

PuebloBonito from Northern heights (Author's collection, copyright 2019)

    This time-consuming effort required patience in order to be effective.  Patience on a macro scale can be called commitment and it was this commitment to pursue a common vision that fuelled the Chacoan culture through the vicissitudes of the ages and the ravages of environmental difficulties.  During these centuries, they perfected their building techniques and built their concept of time into almost every great house extant as well as their extensive network of roads.  Along the way, Ancestral Puebloans developed a thriving system of “international commerce” by importing commodities that buttressed their religious ceremonies and, ultimately, supported their experience of time.

    In the end, the same patience required to build this manifestation of time undoubtedly had a great deal to do with the abandonment of their monuments because they understood the difficulties associated with building their world as opposed to existing in it.  It was their commitment to this concept of time which prompted them to walk away from their centuries of hard work before they were buried by it. 

 Kin Kletso Masonry (Author's collection, copyright 2019)

Time and Tides

Yes, I just returned to the United States with a plethora of topics and images to write about yet, I find myself overcome by the enormity of the tasks I neglected while traveling.

Forgive me.

War by Other Means, Part Three

    At the northern end of the Chihuahuan Corridor, Chacoans were developing their great house culture and they had also begun inter-pueblo integration between their outlying communities.  By 1150, the increased complexity of society on both ends of the Chihuahua Corridor created new markets and new production centres.  

Tri-walled Kiva at Pueblo del Arroyo, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. (Author's collection copyright 2019)

    Of course, the increased trade could have had a synergistic effect on social development - especially within the elite classes.  Because of this situation, Casas Grandes, previously an outpost along the Chihuahua Corridor, grew in size and came into direct competition with the Hohokam society’s shell trade.  This shorter and more direct trade route, coupled with new Mesoamerican metallurgical techniques in copper and advances in aviculture practices seem to have sounded the death knell for Hohokam hegemony.  The Chalchihuites provided luxury goods in quantities and at delivery speeds that the Hohokam could not match.  By this time evidence shows Hohokam culture had retreated from its advance posts like Winona and Stony Canyon to their strongholds of Papaguería, the Gila-Salt and Tucson Basins while evidence of Mesoamerica culture amongst the Hohokam diminished.

Homol'ovi Ruins, Winslow, Arizona. (Author's collection. Copyright 2019)

    So it is evident through our discussion here that, prior to 1150 AD, the majority of Chacoan/Mogollon trade conducted with Mesoamerica passed through a Hohokam middleman who absorbed most of the Mesoamerica culture while passing along only the deliverables which is in-line with today’s concept of a middleman marking up any re-sell goods.  Additionally, timelines corroborate the theory that the rise of the Chalchihuites in Zape broke the Hohokam trade monopoly  and forced their retreat from Chacoan western borderlands.  Simultaneously, the timeline reveals that this more direct contact with Mesoamerica culture brought about a rapid decline in Chacoan/Mogollon culture between 950 and 1250 AD.  

Original Ceiling at Aztec Ruins, Aztec, New Mexico. (Author's collection. Copyright 2019)

War by Other Means, Part two

    Beginning in 300 BC, the Hohokam tribes in today’s United States’ state of Arizona were heavily invested in the shell trade with Chacoan and Mogollon tribes.  To the extent that in the Papaguería area of today’s Tohono O’odham National Reservation, there is evidence of a large habitation site dedicated to the production and export of shells.  The period of 550-1150 AD saw the zenith of Mesoamerican goods finding their way into Hohokam culture via the Sonoran Corridor and it was in this time of increased Mesoamerica contact that Hohokam shell work achieved its highest artistic level.  As with trade, so too comes culture and Hohokam society seems to have absorbed a number of Mesoamerican traits: platform mounds and ball courts, to name a few.  In fact, by 600 AD there were even ball courts located at the remote Hohokam sites of Winona and Stony Canyon (outposts along the western birder of Chacoan territory).  

Ball Court Hoop, Anthropology Museum, Mexico City (Author's collection. copyright 2019)

Due to their out-lying locations, it is surmised that these two sites were actually trading posts due to their proximity to Chacoan/Mogollon settlements.  Commerce activity in this region was very dynamic during this entire period and shouldn’t be thought of as locked containers passing customs checks with end user certificates for verification or even clipboards with inventory lists received via Email.  It was more like the old town five and dime store owner who was aware of all facets of inventory and supply/demand in his head because he was familiar with every nuance of change that his town and customers experienced.  

                          

Ball court marker, Teotihuacan (Author's collection. copyright 2019)

Trade continued like this for a long time but in about 1,000 AD things began to change; that is when social complexity changed in the Sinaloa region of today’s Mexico: the southern end of the Chihuahua Corridor.  The Chalchihuites were the northern most representatives of Mesoamerica culture and between 950 and 1150 AD their seat of power was the city of Zape in northern Durango.

Ball court hoops from Teotihuacan, Anthropology Museum, Mexico City (Author's collection. copyright 2019)