Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between architecture, community organization and leadership . The last decade of research has revealed that the earliest “great houses” are found not in the Chaco region, but instead within the centers of ninth century Mesa Verde villages to the north. The communities focused on these first great houses proved to be politically, economically, and demographically unstable and failed by the early tenth century. Significant declines in Mesa Verde regional population beginning by A.D. 880 and continuing through 940 appear to have contributed to demographic growth in the Chaco region and the emergence of a “second generation” of great houses. The design of these later tenth century great houses is a hybrid model of two distinct patterns of community organization and leadership found in the earlier Mesa Verde villages . These later great house communities appear to have combined the “mechanical” solidarity of kinship and dual organization ties of local communities with the more “organic” solidarity of ritual and economic leadership at a regional level (Durkheim in Division of Labor in Society. Free Press, Glencoe, New York, 1964). Symbols representing these leaders or their great house societies can be seen in tenth and eleventh century rock art at key points on the landscape. These portrayals and the long lives of these great houses suggest a more resilient system.
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Notes
- 1.
The last great migration from the Mesa Verde region by A.D. 1300 contributes to the eventual establishment of the Pueblo communities of the Modern Era in present day New Mexico and Arizona.
- 2.
Sipapu is a term used by Southwestern archaeologists for a feature found in historic Pueblo plazas or kivas and some prehistoric pitstructures. It can be a small pit feature in the north center of a pitstructure or a hole cut into a wooden plank that roofs a larger ritual feature within a Chaco-era great kiva. It is a type of shrine that represents a link to an earlier world.
- 3.
These traits include neck-banded ceramic styles, certain architectural styles, and possibly even the concept of great houses .
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Wilshusen, R.H. (2017). Early Pueblo Great House Communities and Their Leaders: The Transformation of Community Leadership in the Mesa Verde and Chaco Regions, A.D. 625–1025. In: Chacon, R., Mendoza, R. (eds) Feast, Famine or Fighting?. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48402-0_10
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