Southwest City: Chaco Canyon Great Houses
The city of Chaco Canyon, in present day New Mexico, was a cosmopolitan trade hub from about 850 CE to 1250CE. Trade was critical – Chaco Canyon sat on in salty, infertile soil. Most of the food had to be imported, and Chaco Canyon became a regional economic center connected to other cities by roads and irrigation systems, some 15 miles long. Their sophistication showed in architecture. They built unique semi-circular stone buildings with hundreds of rooms tucked into its five or six stories.
These buildings are called great houses, even though nobody lived in them. They were more like ancient office buildings and shops. The particularly unique thing about these huge complexes is that they didn’t start as small buildings and have add-ons over the years. Archaeologists believe the Great Houses, about 150 of them in all, were planned to be large from the start.
