Despite the scope of literature on Chaco, many of the central research questions have proven to be particularly difficult to resolve.  Was Chaco a political center (Sebastian 1992), a ritual center (Renfrew 2001; Yoffee 2001), an economic center (Earle 2001) or some combination of these factors (Judge 1989, 1993)?  Was there significant social differentiation among the residents of Chaco and, if not, then how were the large number of workers mobilized to build great houses?  What was the nature of the relationships within the Chaco “system,” among canyon great houses and the many surrounding outliers?  How can we explain the dichotomy between the large great houses and the numerous small house sites?  Does such a dichotomy suggest significant social or political differentiation?  What were the key organizational groups or networks upon which Chacoan society was constructed?  Even more basic questions such as how many people lived in Chaco remain unresolved, with wide discrepancies between the lower and higher estimates.

Resolution of these questions has been hindered by the fact that the pre-1970s fieldwork in the canyon has been inadequately reported.  Pepper and Wetherill’s excavation of much of Pueblo Bonito, including extraordinary artifact assemblages that a century later remain unparalleled, has been described in only one short monograph and a few articles (Pepper 1899, 1905, 1906, 1909, 1920; see also Reyman 1989).  Neil Judd’s later work at Pueblo Bonito and Pueblo del Arroyo resulted in three published volumes that remain important sources, but unfortunately fail to adequately provide information on the wealth of artifacts recovered and the large number of rooms and areas excavated.  Edgar Hewett never published a major monograph on the Chetro Ketl excavations.

Exacerbating these deficiencies in the published record is the distribution of the artifacts, images, and field records from the excavated great houses (primarily Pueblo Bonito, Pueblo del Arroyo, Chetro Ketl, Kin Kletso and Pueblo Alto) and small house sites among several different institutions: the National Anthropological Archive, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, the National Park Service’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park Museum Collection, the Maxwell Museum at the University of New Mexico, and the Museum of New Mexico’s Laboratory of Anthropology.  As Wills (2001:448) notes, many of the proposed models of how Chacoan society was structured and developed frequently emphasize data collected in the early part of the 20th century.  An archaeologist attempting to test these ideas, however, faces the daunting and expensive task of assembling material from widely scattered sources.  The result has been that while models often emphasize data from the early studies of the canyon, tests of these models often rely only on the more fully published recent excavations.

Moreover, as Mills (2002:81) has observed, it has been difficult to initiate new fieldwork in the canyon since the completion of the NPS/UNM Chaco Project.  In fact, there has been virtually no new fieldwork in the canyon in the last two decades (Mills 2002:68) and, for a variety of reasons, prospects for major excavations in the near future are minimal.  Data from the earlier projects described above are thus likely to comprise the archaeological record available to scholars for the foreseeable future.  More importantly, the dedication of Indian Nations and archaeologists to preserve cultural heritage and properties dictates that our diverse community of researchers fully utilize existing intellectual resources in dialogue with modern day descendants. 

 

To address these issues, the School of American Research invited twelve scholars with either expertise in the Pueblo prehistory of the Southwest (Chaco Canyon, in particular) or in the use of digital media to address research questions in the humanities and social sciences, to meet for three days in Santa Fe in June 2002.  The purpose of the meeting was to discuss key research questions regarding Chaco and the broader Southwest and to explore the creation of a digital research archive of information from Chaco Canyon and the surrounding region.  These scholars examined current examples of archives such as the Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery created by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the award winning project The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, initiated by Ed Ayers at the University of Virginia.  The group also discussed the potential for a Chaco Digital Research Archive to significantly enhance our ability to answer key research questions by improving access to the full record of surveys and excavations.  Such an archive was envisioned as a “virtual” collection of the scattered Chaco information that would be integrated in a manner such that scholars could more easily assemble the types of data most relevant to a variety of important research questions.

The seminar participants concluded that a critical first step toward a better comprehension of Chaco should be the collection and integration of data that will allow a better understanding of the functions of Chacoan settlements.  What activities were conducted at canyon great houses and how did they differ from small houses or from outlying great houses? Were there significant resident populations at all of these settlements? Is there similar evidence for ritual at all settlements or evidence of the production of the shell, turquoise, and wooden objects that are so evident at Pueblo Bonito? Are canyon great houses more similar to each other than to small houses or outliers, or do the canyon great houses themselves vary so much that the “great house” category creates an inaccurate notion of homogeneity? Seminar participants also noted that the recent stream of Chaco publications (see Lekson 2005, Neitzel 2003, Noble 2004) demonstrates that a renewed interest in answering these key Chacoan issues has emerged in the last four or five years; they also emphasized that these efforts would not only would be helped immensely by the creation of a central digital archive, but may be ultimately unsuccessful without it.

To address the key questions regarding Chaco, the seminar participants decided that the digital archive should initially focus on five sites in the Chacoan World.  Beginning with Pueblo Bonito, the largest and most important of the great houses as well as the one that has been most completely excavated, is a logical and critical first step in creating the Archive.  The problems that will need to be addressed and solved in digitizing the Bonito data encompass the full range of issues that will arise as we work with additional information from Chaco.  As we work with the Pueblo Bonito materials recovered by the Hyde Exploring Expedition and with the data from Judd’s later research, we also will incorporate information from three small house sites, currently known as Bc 50, 51, and 53, and from the outlying Chacoan great house of Aztec some 50 miles distant in a region connected to the canyon by the long North Road.

At the end of their discussion, the seminar participants enthusiastically endorsed the need to create the Chaco Digital Archive and outlined initial plans to move forward toward that goal. The group collectively agreed to serve as a Steering Committee that will cooperate in developing the archive and seeking funding to support its creation, and Stephen Plog, of the University of Virginia, assented to lead that effort.