Time and Patience: the Most Powerful Warriors. Part Four

Another manifestation of Archaeoastronomy extant in Chaco Canyon is Cardinal       alignments.  North-South and East-West building orientations predominated during the flouresence period in the canyon (1000-1175 AD circa) and were so important by that stage that, in the case of Pueblo Bonito, an existing great house was expanded upon and re-oriented from the original S/SE floorpan to North-South alignment.

(Imagery courtesy of Google Earth)

    As opposed to the ancestral veneration as the basis for the S/SE orientation, I have found no clear ethnographic reasons for the cardinal alignment.  In fact, our concept of the cardinal directions would not have existed for the Chacoans; their understanding of the world was not like ours.  Perhaps the emerging reliance upon North-South alignments during the fluorescence stemmed from Chacoan understanding of the rotation of the cosmos through direct observation.  Long term observation of their revolving skies may have brought them to the conclusion that the cosmos rotates from a single point on either end of their world (North-South).  Their daily observation of the sun’s patterns - either through direct monitoring, horizon calendars or employment of a gnomonic device (see part two) - would have given them a good understanding of what we call East-West and, together, these concepts could have been employed to revitalise a flagging theocratic civilisation based upon this new cosmic concept.  

    These rumination aside, we are left with only the facts. The reasons for these orientations are not clear, there appears to be no utilitarian reason for the cardinal alignment (much less its sudden importance) and there are no topographical restrictions that would require construction to adhere so closely to these alignments.  The collection of solar heating may have been a factor in general south facing construction but there is nothing extant to insinuate such strict adherence to a cardinal azimuth.  Recent archaeological activity in Chaco Canyon suggests that even at the height of its fluorescence, Chaco Canyon had a rather small population that population surged at intermittent periods.  This suggests a religious employment of the site and would explain why the area was so well organised and such care was taken in its large-scale construction.  In this scenario (religious centre) the attention to detail would make sense if these great houses were built as physical manifestations of Ancestral Puebloan’s cosmic concept.  If this idea were true, even the act of building the great houses would have become an act of faith or contrition.  An idea like that may be reason enough for individuals without knowledge of the wheel and no beasts of burden construct an intricate road system over which to transport tens of thousands of trees from distances of up to 80km for use in construction of these houses.

    The question is what happened to cause a change in construction management? During this fluorescence period - when a surge in great house construction took place - almost every building exhibits signs of cardinal point orientation and there are several cases of inter-site alignment along the cardinal points as well, which indicates an even greater level of civil engineering on behalf of the Chacoans.  The construction of several buildings within Chaco between 1040 and 1160 AD (finish dates) demonstrate a clear premeditation on behalf of the Chacoan leadership to inter-relate their construction developments with regards to their cosmic concept.  Pueblo Alto, New Alto, Tsin Kletsin and Casa Rinconada are all flourecence era construction that are not only built with respect to the N-S alignment but are also aligned to each other despite their positions being separated by almost five kilometres.   Pueblo Alto, finished in ~1040AD, with an internal alignment of 178.9º is directly North of Tsin Kletsin.  Tsin Kletsin, finished in ~1115AD and due South of Pueblo Alto - constructed with an internal alignment of 178.7º.  Interestingly, these two great houses are outside of the canyon proper, on the mesas North and South of the canyon and in sight of each other; leading to conspiracy theories concerning warning stations and internal strife.  New Alto is a smaller great house within sight of, and directly to the West of Pueblo Alto.  This New Alto great house was constructed in approximately 1130AD and is directly North (and also within sight of) Casa Rinconada.  Casa Rinconada is located in Chaco Canyon (away from other great houses) and was constructed in ~1060AD and has an internal alignment of 180.1º.

    Through all of this the enigma remains (or deepens) because as cardinal alignment began to supersede S/SE orientation as the predominant expression of archaeoastronomy in Chaco Canyon, we see that same S/SE orientation become predominant in the Totah Region of the Chacoan world.  This region was at the northern end of the Great North Road and the destination for many during the initial abandonment of Chaco Canyon.  This simultaneous shift seems to indicate a rift in cosmic concepts.  Perhaps those that believed in the old ways moved North and built Aztec and Salmon Great houses along with their associated outliers while the “new” philosophy of cardinal alignment took over in the Chaco core.  

The New Year

We are off to a Big Bang this season.  Tune in next week for more on time itself...

Holiday Spirit - Part Two

We extend this festive outlook now to the rest of the coming year…

Holiday Spirit - Part One

    As we celebrate this period of good will towards man, let us all take a moment to reflect on the similarity of the different holidays and realise we aren't as different as the evening news tries to tell us we are.  Each holiday is based in the hope for a better future - just the sentiment of the Winter Solstice.

The Christmas season

All,
    Please be so kind as to forgive me the coming weeks as life is asking a bit more than I can deliver.

Thanks!

Time and Patience: the Most Powerful Warriors. Part Three

    The nexus of astronomy and architecture is called archaeoastronomy and in Chaco Canyon, NM it is manifested in three predominant ways.  One of these is in front-facing South/Southeast (S/SE) orientated structures - we will discuss the other ways in future instalments of this topic.

Pueblo Pintado a S/SE orientated structure (~160 degrees)
(Author's collection. Copyright 2019)

    Buildings with S/SE orientation are well documented back to Basketmaker III pit houses (400-700AD) - well before the earliest great houses - and continued to be built through the middle of the Pueblo I Period (700-850AD).  Archaeological surveys find that the orientation azimuths range from 151 to 161degrees and this S/SE orientation was consistently applied to Chacoan architecture for 700 years (450-1140AD).  The fact that this orientation doesn’t deviate with latitudinal change suggests that it wasn’t based on direct regional celestial observation.  Additionally, the area where this S/SE orientation dominates is too large for a common-to-all terrain feature which could insinuate this azimuth on the Chacoan psyche. 

    With this in mind, I should surmise this orientation was culturally important to  Chacoans for reasons that are not readily clear and the consistent application of this azimuth over centuries also indicates the employment of some physical means.  

    There exists an ethno-archaeological basis for this cultural importance amongst the telling of Hopi migration stories about the Snake Clan which migrated from the Navajo Mountain region to the Black Mesa region of today’s Arizona - a heading of approximately 165 degrees.  A version of this migration story seems to be recounted by Cosmos Mindeleff in 1891.  

    ”…A brilliant star arose in the southeast, which would shine for a while and then disappear.  The old men said, ‘Beneath that star there must be people’, so they determined to travel towards it.  They cut a staff and set it in the ground and watched until the star reached its top, then they started and traveled as long as the star shone; when it disappeared they halted…sometimes many years elapsed before it appeared again.  When this occurred, our people built houses during their halt; they built both round and square houses…They waited until the star came to the top of the staff again, then they moved on.”

Mesoamerican religious staff from Teotihuacan, Mexico (circa 70AD)
(Author's collection. Copyright 2019)

The veracity of this statement is borne through the statement concerning housing - “they built both round and square houses”.  Archaeological proof exists all over the southwest today of pit houses like this from the Basketmaker periods.  Today we have no reason to believe that this doesn’t extend to the means of navigation employed as well.  They speak of a simple cut staff - NOT a cross-member or cross-staff as posited by JM Malville in his excellent 2011 paper.  To date there have been found multitudes of staffs and religious sceptres in Chacoan tombs throughout the region (as well as across Mesoamerica) and these staffs could easily be symbolic of the Gnomon navigational device described in Part two. 

    The ease of reproducing this bearing with a gnomon used as a carpenter’s square fulfils our hypothesis for a construction device used to reproduce this S/SE orientation.  Simultaneously, the employment of this simple tool, in this configuration, would negate the archaeological “smoking gun” that scholars are looking for to corroborate this theory.  The answer is hiding in plain sight, we just don’t know what we are looking at.

    All native American tribes extant demonstrate great reverence for their ancestors and there is no conflicting evidence in the case of Ancestral Puebloans.  If we couple that with the verifiable evidence from their migration myths, it isn’t unrealistic to extrapolate our hypothesis here that the south/southeast manifestation in archaeoastronomy in and around the Chacoan world was based on ancestral veneration.  In a further extrapolation, I posit the use of a simple astronomical tool - in use around the world for centuries prior - as a means of building those structures and the proof is in museums throughout the American Southwest labeled “Chacoan religious staff”.

Pueblo Bonito from the inside.  Originally S/SE orientated (~160degrees), later altered to North/South.
(Author's collection. Copyright 2019) 

Time and Patience, the Most Powerful Warriors. Part Two

    While writing notes on southeast orientation and Cardinal points, I realised that I must address some basic facts and ideas as a precursor to understanding the Chacoan astronomy/architecture nexus.  
    Time in our world is created by two activities; the spinning of the Earth and the Earth’s rotation around the Sun.  Due to the former we have sunrise and sunset (the time of day) and from the latter we enjoy the change of seasons (the time of year).  Through these two types of time, the sun weaves its way across our skies in specific, observable patterns and it was these patterns and conditions which were closely observed by the ancestral Puebloans and became intrinsic to their very existence.

    Through the migration vignette from part one we see that these ancients understood the concept of direction, even if they didn’t have a word for azimuth, declination or Altitude.  As proof today, we have their repeated use of specific directions in their architecture over centuries of building.  This could have been easily accomplished through the use of a gnomon.  The gnomon is a simple tool for determining direction/time through observation of the sun’s movement and was first developed in Babylon though examples exist in the ancient world from China to Peru.

    A gnomon is built by placing a straight stick vertically in level ground and marking the location of the stick’s shadow on the ground through the course of the day.  This will quickly reveal the Cardinal directions and the device is eerily similar to the star tracking “compass” stick described in our migration myth from part one.  With a little ingenuity, this device can be a mobile compass as well.  To employ it one has to first determine the desired direction of travel.  Runners are then sent towards that direction and in the opposite.  These runners merely determine a straight line path through the gnomon itself and begin movement in the desired direction - always traveling in three parties and always re-evaluating their direction using the previous two points and terrain references prior to advancing.  If the party becomes lost or unsure, they merely stop for a day, set up the gnomon, verify the directions and begin again.

North wall of Aztec West great house which is aligned with summer solstice sunrise
(Author's collection. copyright 2019)

    Through close observation over time, a gnomon can also determine the azimuth of the equinoxes and the solstices.  When this began to happen, our ancestral Puebloans were determining annual calendars through the sun’s predictable nature.  Every March and September 21, the Sun rises and sets on the East-West meridian and its declination (distance from the Equator to the Poles measured in degrees) is 0 out of a possible 90 degrees.  Additionally, the gnomon can track the sun’s behaviour through its Winter and Summer Solstice declinations which are a positive or negative 23.5 degrees depending on the time of year.   The gnomon can also determine the altitude of the sun, track the Moon's activity through the full moon cycle and is a carpenter's square.  When this level of expertise is reached, the gnomon is a formidable weapon for nation building.  Horizon calendars can be created and future plans can be made on a grand scale.  Those grand scale plans can be employed to serve specific purposes which can, ultimately, manipulate public opinion and ideals.  

    When utilised in this fashion, our gnomon ceases to be a simple stick in the ground and becomes a sceptre of national power.  In this simple devise lies the power to legitimise rulers by “commanding the heavens” and thus, compel subjects to build organised cosmic cities which create an infrastructure based on that cyclic nature.   Their hard work is rewarded by security, well-planned festivals and markets centred around these cosmic events which stabilise lifestyles, build a vibrant economy and, ultimately, come to define them as a culture.

Specific events tied to an horizon calendar providing anticipatory warning for festival preparation.   (Author's composition)