Information

Introduction

          Chaco Canyon, located at the heart of the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico, was the home of the prehistoric Ancestral Pueblo people for approximately 700 years. This location, widely known for its monumental architecture, is of great interest to archaeologists and tourists alike, since the remains of the ancient civilization are as impressive as they are confounding. However, it would be shortsighted to explore Chaco Canyon without taking other prehistoric community sites of the region into account. The similarities between the grand scale architecture of the canyon and the local structures of regional communities strongly suggest that there was a relationship between the two. Archaeologists refer to this relationship as the Chacoan Regional System. However, the nature of this relationship has yet to be defined; it may be based on economics, ritual, or some other factors. Scholars (Hayes and Windes 1975; Windes 1978; Van Dyke 1999, 2003, 2008) have suggested that visibility was important to Chacoan people, and they have identified line-of-sight connections between great houses and shrines in Chaco Canyon. However, conclusions have not yet been drawn about whether a network of intervisibility exists between the canyon and outlying communities. If there were, in fact, a line-of-sight network between Chaco Canyon and outlying communities, it would reveal a great amount of information about their relationship.

Conclusion

          The evidence from Site 1752, Tsin Kletsin, Kin Klizhin, and the shrines at Kin Bineola and Candelaria suggest that intervisibility was a foundation for Chaco Canyon architectural locations. Drawing from the shrine network proposed by Hayes and Windes (1975), these four sites’ line-of-sight visibility extended this network into the San Juan Basin and beyond, creating a web of intervisibility that encompassed much of the region. Visitors to my webpage can experience this evidence for themselves. It is likely that observation, communication, and the infusion of landscape with meaning were important factors that played a role in the everyday life of Chacoan communities. Kantner (2003) argued that the Chaco Regional System was a misnomer, but on the contrary, this line-of-sight network, often reinforced through multiple routes of connection, certainly transformed this region with highly variable community sites into a “unified whole”, connected by intervisibility.