4/14/14

Chaco culture enchants

When the people of the Chaco Wash were building in what is now northwestern New Mexico the ancestors of the Lakota were living in post-archaic North Carolina.
The cultural flowering of the Chacoan people began in the mid 800s and lasted more than 300 years. We can see it clearly in the grand scale of the architecture. Using masonry techniques unique for their time, they constructed massive stone buildings (Great Houses) of multiple stories containing hundreds of rooms much larger than any they had previously built. The buildings were planned from the start, in contrast to the usual practiced of adding rooms to existing structures as needed. Constructions on some of these buildings spanned decades and even centuries. Although each is unique, all great houses share architectural features that make them recognizable as Chacoan.

















2 comments:

DakotaLightPhoto said...

Beautiful images of a place like no other! Thanks!!

larry kurtz said...

Otherworldly, NDG: the road in must be horrible to keep people from flying over it. The last four and a half miles are some of the worst on the planet.

Was surprised by the oil field traffic on the first five miles, too.

Thanks for coming by!