Ancient Pueblo Peoples - Architecture - Pueblo Complexes and Great Houses

Pueblo Complexes and Great Houses

The Ancestral Pueblo people crafted a unique architecture with planned community spaces. The ancient population centers such as Chaco Canyon (outside Crownpoint, New Mexico), Mesa Verde (near Cortez, Colorado), and Bandelier National Monument (near Los Alamos, New Mexico) for which the Ancestral Pueblo peoples are renowned, consisted of apartment-like complexes and structures made from stone, adobe mud, and other local material, or were carved into the sides of canyon walls. Each were influenced by themselves and design details from other cultures as far away as contemporary Mexico.

In their day, these ancient towns and cities were usually multi-storied and multi-purposed buildings surrounding open plazas and viewsheds and were occupied by hundreds to thousands of Ancestral Pueblo peoples. These population complexes hosted cultural and civic events and infrastructure that supported a vast outlying region hundreds of miles away linked by transportation roadways.

Constructed well before 1492 CE, these Ancestral Pueblo towns and villages in the Southwestern United States were located in various defensive positions, for example, on high steep mesas such as at Mesa Verde or present-day Acoma Pueblo, called the "Sky City", in New Mexico. Earlier than 900 CE progressing past the 13th century, the population complexes were a major center of culture for the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. In Chaco Canyon, Chacoan developers quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling 15 major complexes which remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century.

Evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the Sun Dagger petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Many Chacoan buildings may have been aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles, requiring generations of astronomical observations and centuries of skillfully coordinated construction. Climate change is thought to have led to the emigration of Chacoans and the eventual abandonment of the canyon, beginning with a 50-year drought in 1130.