Pueblo

The Desert Archaics to Pre-Hisatsinom

from 9000 to 8000 BCE, a nomadic tribe referred to as the Desert Archaics occupied the mesas throughout the hunter-gatherer period. Their knowledge of celestial cycles appears to have been well established: Petroglyphs representing constellations line many rock walls throughout and surrounding the House Made of Dawn. Scholars posit these storyboard images to be recordings of astrological events, histories, and calendars. Upon those high plateaus is a unique view of celestial movements. It can be presumed that the various stellar patterns were observed and calculated from ancient days, for around approximately 700 CE the Hisatsinom culture, whose people resided in pit houses, begin construction on the near five-story complex archae-oastronomy dwellings, or great houses, with major structures designed with internal solar and/or lunar alignments.

Hisatsinom Culture

The great houses in the House Made of Dawn were once thought to have been haphazardly constructed, but based upon closer examination by scholars such as Anna Sofaer, it is thought that the structures in the Chaco Canyon area were planned and executed with the purpose of recording solar, lunar, and other important stellar movements. Scholars posit that these structures were low in population save for ceremonial times, when pilgrimages were made from the surrounding 150 communities (and perhaps further), which were connected via a precisely constructed set of roads. The structures of the great house are oriented [Page 1066]north-south and east-west to form a three-community house that shares in a lunar minor alignment, representing the moon's rise, its meridian, and other occasional observances. In addition, there is a solar and lunar observatory at Fajada Butte that was used to mark solstices, equinoxes, and the 18.6-year cycle of the lunar northern and southern extremes. The Chaco Canyon phenomenon thus embodies the ancient Puebloans' worldview.

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