Steve Plog – Exploring the Many Interpretations of Chaco

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Multiple interpretations have been proposed to explain what has been referred to as the “Chaco Phenomenon,” defined primarily by the construction of large masonry great houses and roads in Chaco Canyon. I briefly discuss the history of research in Chaco and consider some of the ways the long period of excavations and our understanding of the earliest excavations, has impacted our perception of Chaco great houses. This history has influenced our perception of some key aspects of Chaco sites, including great houses, and as a result have led us to oversimply key aspects of Chaco Canyon history. Finally, I summarize what recent collaborative research I’ve been involved in has revealed about the social organization and Mesoamerican relationships of the Pueblo people who lived in the canyon.

Steve Plog is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia where he taught from 1978-2019. His research has focused on the pre-Hispanic Pueblo Southwest with emphases on ceramic variation, demography, exchange, social organization, religion/cosmology and culture change primarily during the period from AD 800-1300. He has done fieldwork in the Chevelon Canyon region south of Winslow, the northern Black Mesa region in northeastern Arizona, and to a very limited extent in Chaco Canyon. Most of Plog’s research on Chaco has been based on the study of archives and the analysis of collections from the major excavations in Chaco between 1896 and 1927. Between 2002-2012 he initiated and directed the creation of the Chaco Research Archive (www.chacoarchive.org). Plog is the author of Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest, co-editor with Carrie Heitman of Chaco Revisited: New Research on the Prehistory of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico and co-editor with Chris Schwartz and Pat Gilman of Birds of the Sun: Macaws and People in the U.S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest.

Suggested Readings

Bishop, Katelyn J., and Samantha G. Fladd

2018  Ritual fauna and social organization at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. Kiva 84:293-316.

George, Richard, and many others

2018    Archaeogenomic evidence from the Southwestern US points to a pre-Hispanic scarlet macaw breeding colony. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115:8740–8745. 

Plog, Stephen

2018 Dimensions and dynamics of pre-Hispanic Pueblo organization and authority: The Chaco Canyon conundrum. In Puebloan Societies: Homology and Heterogeneity in Time and Space, edited by Peter M. Whiteley, pp. 237-260. School of Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.