User:WThiels/The Great North Road

= The Roads of Chaco = The Roads of Chaco stretch all over the Chaco Canyon. These roads have many theorized uses ranging from economic, military, and a total unification effort of the canyon as a whole.

History
Attempting to date ancient roads always proves to be a difficult thing. Kincaid et al. (1983:9-34-9-46) dated the North Road, South Road, and the Ahshislepah Road Using mean Ceramic dating. This study placed the South Road around A.D. 900 and the North and Ahshislepah Roads around A.D. 1000. Later studies such as Windes (1991:125- 126) would use more advanced forms of dating to place most of the roads in the Chaco region from A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1100.

Function
As it goes for most ancient roads unless it has been specifically documented what the use of the road was it can be very difficult to discern what its use actually was for. For the case of the roads in the Chaco Canyon region these theories became of special interest because previous theories came to the conclusion that this region did not produce a complex social structure. The fact that there are roads lead researchers to believe that where there are roads there must be evidence of a more complex social system. Examining the roads and learning what they where used for would help to answer the question of what the greater Chaco area was like.

Economic
Potentially the most common use for roads, Ebert and Hitchcock propose that a central bureaucracy regulated agriculture around major urban centers. In more rural areas people could escape the reach of the government and manage there own farms. This heavy farming would need a way to transport goods to and from the major urban centers, thus the miles of roads were constructed to accommodate the flow of goods in and out of each center.

Another use would of the roads might serve to connect the main settlement with its satellite settlements in the surrounding area. These connecting roads would serve two purposes, easy travel between locations and transportation of goods. Where the main settlement would control the acquisition of farmed goods and manage distribution to its satellite settlements.

These central areas or urban centers would have been directly associated with the Great Houses, Penasco Blanco, Pueblo Alto, Pueblo del Arroyo, and Una Vida. These were located next to natural sites in the canyon and on vantage points in the canyon. Some roads served to connected the Great Houses to each other but the bulk of the road system was broken down into four main roads. North South, West, and Southwest were the main roads in the Powers model of the Chaco road systems. These roads extended from Chaco out to locations with useful natural recourses.

Military
Another proposed use of the roads in the Chaco region was for military use. A good infrastructure of roadways is invaluable for a quick military response. According to Wilcox the great house based road network, using the ceremonial exchange of ritual turquoise to join great house elites, would eventually turn into more a state demanding policy. These roads would be used to advance the Chacoan military on their agriculturally rich neighbors, the great houses would be used as barracks or headquarters for local agents. In the roads themselves there is some evidence to support this claim. The roads are built very wide, for a large army of people wide roads allowing for marching side-by-side rather than single file would alllow an army to reach their destination much faster.

Unification
One more proposed function for the roads of Chaco would be unification. In his paper Vivian outlines 2 models for unification. Symbolic and cosmographic. In symbolic models roads unify social groups and in cosmographic models roads signify the overall unification of the people as a whole and serve a more ritual purpose in the community.

Symbolic
The construction and use of these roads can be linked to the increasing number of droughts in the area. Moving the population of the great houses to more productive areas of the San Juan Basin, the main Chaco population abandoning the canyon to move to more hospitable lands, and constructing roads to link the house populations together and counteract the displacement was the main use of these roads.

Cosmographic
In several ancient cultures the people would build road structures depicting constellations that they would see in the sky. examples of this include the Inca Ceque systems and the Cuzco paths. The Cuzco paths being a cosmographical map that the Inca incorporated into all things connected with their world view. In Chaco this theory is very similar, the roads serve as a map of the cosmos and the lines they make connect the stars on the ground.