Casas Grandes - Archeological Ruins

Archeological Ruins

At the time of the Spanish Conquest, the district of Casas Grandes was studded with artificial mounds, from which looters took numerous stone axes, metates or corn-grinders, and earthenware pottery vessels of various kinds.

Before significant archaeological investigation, sizable portions of buildings from pre-Columbian times were extant about half a mile from the modern community. The ruins were built of sun-dried blocks of mud and gravel, about 22 inches thick, and of irregular length, generally about 3 feet (0.91 m), probably formed and dried in place. The thick walls seem to have been plastered both inside and outside. A principal structure extended 800 feet (240 m) from north to south, and 250 feet (76 m) east to west. It was generally rectangular, and appears to have consisted of three separate units joined by galleries or lines of lower buildings.

The homes at Paquimé were circular and semi-circular pit houses and coursed-adobe room blocks built around plazas. The living spaces varied in size from closet-sized to extensive courtyards. Walls at many of the angles stand 40 to 50 feet (15 m) high, and indicate an original elevation of up to six or seven stories. Ruins about 450 feet (140 m) from the main grouping consist of a series of rooms ranged round a square court, seven rooms to each side with a larger apartment at each corner.

The settlement featured T-shaped doorways and stone disks at the bottom of ceiling support columns, both distinctive of Pueblan architecture. Casas Grandes had ballcourts, though they were relatively small compared to other major sites.

A 5000-pound iron meteorite was found in one of the rooms, carefully wrapped in linen. The meteorite is displayed in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Excavations in one compound produced eggshell fragments, bird skeletons and traces of wooden perches. Archeologists concluded that the community raised scarlet macaws, which feathers were sacred and important in Mesoamerican rituals.

A major collection of Casas Grandes pottery is currently held by the Museum of Peoples and Cultures at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Stanford University in California also holds pottery artifacts from here.

Ruins similar to those of Casas Grandes exist near Gila and Salinas in New Mexico, and in Colorado. They may each represent cultural groups related to the Mogollon culture. The early ethnologist Hubert Howe Bancroft, in his The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America (1874), related them to the modern-day Hopi, sometimes known as Moqui during his period. Contemporary scholars have not identified the descendants of the Casas Grandes people.