Introduction: “Forgotten Maps” and the Archaeology of Chaco Roads

Abstract

Archaeologists have been studying Chaco roads for more than a century. The articles in this special issue represent new empirical studies of these features and new frameworks for their interpretation. The introduction places research on Chaco roads in context and outlines the relevance of the subsequent chapters.

KEYWORDS:

• Chaco roads
• American Southwest
• Landscape archaeology

“The Navaho refer to these pathways as ‘roads’ and my guess is no better” (Judd 1964:141).

Archaeologists have been grappling with the study of Chaco “roads” for more than a century. Our study and interpretation of the landscape features that stretch across the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico and beyond follows, predictably, the arc of method and theory in American archaeology over the 20th and 21st centuries. For a culture historian like Neil Judd—working at Pueblo Bonito in the early 1920s—the roads were intriguing but had no particular relevance to the chronologically-focused research of the day. It is thus not surprising that, despite promises, he never got around to writing a promised article on the subject (Judd 1954:350).

The heyday of Chaco roads scholarship came 50 years later, when various public initiatives sent crews of archaeologists out into the San Juan Basin to inventory cultural resources. The empirical study of these features spread widely, with cases presented regarding analogous features from Utah (see Hurst 2000), the Cibola region (see Hart and Othole 1993), and elsewhere. The dominance of the roads in this landscape made them an essential part of discussions about the complex context of the “Chaco World” (see summaries in Kantner and Kintigh 2006).

Despite this fluorescence, of research, the status of Chaco roads research in 2017 is mixed. The features remain part of interpretive schemes and are incorporated into new fieldwork (for example, Van Dyke 2008). And yet it often seems that there is little “new” emerging, or distinctive information that can be applied outside of narrow research themes. This is particularly ironic given increasing interest on the subject of “movement” within landscape archaeology (see Snead et al. 2009) and as an element of the so-called “mobilities turn” in the social sciences (see Cresswell 2010).

Two linked trends are noticeable in the recent Chaco roads literature that are connected to this feeling of diminished opportunities. Many interesting and potentially “testable” published concepts, such as those presented by Gwinn Vivian in Kiva 20 years ago (1997a, 1997b) have never been pursued, and the articles themselves are infrequently cited. Other venerable sources allude to available empirical information with great potential that have never been tapped. Natalie Pattison reviewed the survey data collected by the Chaco Center and identified 149 sets of “steps or stairways” were potentially useful for the study of movement in the Chacoan context, an idea that has never been followed up (Pattison 1985:63).

A particularly perplexing element of this neglect of available resources is inconsistency in the “recycling” of the information that does exist. Chaco road features vary widely on different published plans, appearing and disappearing with no obvious rationale. Even a cursory glance at maps of features associated with Chaco Canyon will note features that are included in some instances and excluded in others, rarely with any explanation. Sometimes there are inconsistencies in maps on different pages of the same source. This has become a game of “scholarship telephone,” with errors progressively corrupting the transfer of information over time.

Cartographic confusion is also created by the internal landscape of archaeological knowledge. Some Chaco roads that regularly appear on maps, such as the “Chacra Face Road,” are widely understood to be unsupported by ground study. Others, for which maps are not widely available, are asserted to exist on the basis of the most ephemeral of citations. For example, references to presence of roads in the San Juan Basin during the Pueblo I period, for example (Windes and Van Dyke 2012:84), a correlation with dramatic significance for understanding the development of these features, originate with a single conference poster from 2001.

This is not criticism of the scholars involved, and gray literature citation bedevils archaeology in general, but the aggregate effect of cartographic confusion regarding Chaco Roads is general uncertainty as to the empirical basis for evaluating Chaco roads—thus hindering our ability to better understand what they are. Casual re-use of particular maps reifies the depiction of the Chaco roads therein in ways that may or not reflect authorial intent, adding to the chaos.

One set of “lost maps” are those associated with the Chaco Center's detailed evaluation of roads in the vicinity of Pueblo Alto (Windes 1987; see also Windes 1991). These include traces of the “Great North Road” and routes down into the canyon itself, but also others less familiar. One road documented on these maps connects Chetro Ketl with the “Escavada Community” to the Northeast. Detailed survey of this segment (RS 35) identifies interesting patterns of debitage (Windes 1987:133) that sheds light on the complex issues of road function in the Chaco context and also on aspects of connectivity between different elements of the Chaco Canyon locality.

Despite the potential utility of road segments such as these in gaining a better understanding of the Chaco World; however, they rarely appear on plans besides the original source. This is in some cases an aspect of scale, since many maps emphasize the long-distance routes exemplified by the “Great North Road.” Yet overlooking these maps—and the features that they depict—artificially simplifies the situation. The fine grain provided by Windes (1987) suggests a far more complicated road network directly associated with Chaco Canyon itself than is often acknowledged. Is the macro-patterning of Chaco roads comprehensible if we cannot understand how they are organized at a smaller scale?

The road themselves are a form of “lost map,” representing fundamental organizational elements of the Chacoan world. Without learning to read them we are, as Andrew Fleming has noted (in another context), “… semi-literate, in the face of a landscape which is there to be read and understood” (1998:3). Such maps establish essential context, and keeping them in view is critical to understand both the cultural associations of the features we study and the role of our own context in that process (see Snead 2012).

The articles in this special issue of Kiva illustrate different strategies for moving forward on the study of Chaco roads. The first three emphasize a particular need: detailed, empirical case studies. All three come from what a Chaco-centric perspective would consider “the margins”: SE Utah (Till), SW Colorado (Davis), and the I-40 corridor region crossing the Arizona-New Mexico Border (Janes). Information about Chaco roads from such places have long been used to shed light on the network as a whole (see, for example, Roney 2001). The interpretive framework established by each author articulates ways in which this process continues to be useful. Fundamentally they provide new data, which is always welcome.

The articles by Till and Davis also represent publication of information that has been visible to some in the archaeological community, but not broadly disseminated. Till's contribution reflects long-term fieldwork he and other colleagues have been working on since the late 1990s, while Davis's work emerges from the body of detailed landscape research collected the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. More indirectly, Janes’ contribution links to an influential body of scholarship associated with Chacoan sites in the Manuelito Canyon vicinity (see Fowler and Stein 2001).

The final two articles in this volume represent methodological and conceptual approaches to some of the major aspects of the Chaco road network itself. Weinig addresses one of the fundamental issues of these features—functionality—in an innovative fashion. The GIS analysis presented by Kunitz et al. examines the Great North Road, which has long been the focus of archaeological interest but remains elusive in several critical areas.

Thus even within the relatively small world of Chaco road studies the articles in this special issue offer a range of perspectives. Their purpose is simple: to stimulate thought about one of the most remarkable cultural landscapes known to archaeologists, and to demonstrate that there are many miles yet to be walked on the Chaco roads. The problem they present—one that Neil Judd called “beyond convincing explanation (1964:142)”—remains as pertinent today as it did a hundred years ago.

Acknowledgments

Gratitude is expressed to Kiva editor Debra L. Martin for her patience through the editorial process, and to the authors of the following papers. Each one followed a distinct path to get to publication, but the final product is an entirely collective effort. Thanks also to the late Robert P. Powers, to whom my work on this special issue is dedicated. Bob played a major role in my long-term interest in the roads, paths, and trails of the Ancestral Pueblo world, and he is greatly missed.