Discovery of The Trader

6/4/11
Dr. Peet

Chaco Canyon has been central to my work for over three years now. More specifically, my research focuses on the roadways that web the region. These roadways can span up to ten meters wide, fifty kilometers long and are often paved with packed earth or broken pottery and, in some areas, are bordered with stone and earthen berms. The Chacoan people did not have wheeled carts or other modes of transportation that would require paved roads, so what was the purpose of these ancient roadways?

That is the question I am trying to answer.

I believe these roadways were constructed with spiritual symbolism in mind. Evidence seems to suggest that Chaco Canyon was a religious hub for the Anasazi people. Perhaps the roadways were a means of linking outlying clans to their spiritual center. Perhaps people of these distant clans used the roadways for seasonal pilgrimages to Chaco.

One feature that leads me to my conclusion is the absolute straightness of many of these roads. Avoiding routes of least resistance, the roads travel across broken landscapes with a directness matched by today’s highway engineers. In some cases, the roads keep to their rigid paths by plunging down steep slopes that would be impassible were it not for hand and footholds carved into the cliff face. Was the act of traversing such dangerous roadways a right of passage?

More research is needed.

By studying maps created by Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanners I discovered a new roadway darting to the northwest from Chaco. Hundreds of years of erosion has rendered this roadway invisible to the naked eye, so last year’s field study surveyed seven kilometers of this roadway until it fell into a dry tributary and led us to a boulder containing a single anthropomorphic petroglyph. It’s a unique petroglyph that seems to fall outside of the typical style of Anasazi rock art in shape and form. I’ve not seen any other like it in the southwest.

I’ve labeled this petroglyph as ‘The Trader’ given a mysterious object the figure is carrying. Nearby we discovered a small pueblo we call Trader Ruins. It’s Trader Ruins I have assigned this year’s field study to excavate.