After visiting Chimney Rocks, we drove southwest to the Animas River valley, that flows from Durango to the San Juan. This whole area is part of the San Juan River basin and was an important settlement area for ancestral Puebloans.
Before arriving at our campsite, we stopped at Aztec, NM, in order to explore another World Heritage Cultural Site: the Aztec Ruins.
It has been a National Monument since the 1920s, covering 27 acres.
The name "Aztec" comes from the mistaken notion of some 19th-century archaeologists and anthropologists, like the prominent scholar Lewis H. Morris, that believed the Anasazi culture of the American SW was the cradle of Aztec civilization in Mexico and Mississippian Culture in the American Midwest. (Compare the Atzalan site near Madison, Wisconsin.) A romantic notion, but wrong. Still, scholars debate the extent of Meso-American influence, especially trade and architectural connections, between Mexico and the Anasazi at Chaco Canyon.
The Aztec Ruins go back to 1110 A.D. and may have been built by leaders from Chaco Canyon. There are three separate sites, but only Aztec West has been excavated and opened to the public.
It was nice to be able to wander through the ruins on a self-guided tour.
Aztec West was a "Great House" much more enormous than the Great Houses we have seen so far.
It is roughly 300 X 400 feet and contains about 450-500 rooms.
I will only mention a few unique points about it.
A band of green sandstone blocks runs along the outer walls, perhaps indicating the influence of Chacoan builders who used banded masonry.
This is noteworthy because the exterior and interior walls were all plastered over with adobe (and painted white, probably), and so the masonry would not actually have been visible.
Some of the rooms had curious corner doors high off the floor,
which also comes from Chaco.
The doors are small, as is Janet;
but apparently Anasazi men were about her size, which does not say much in favor of a maize-dominant diet. Being claustrophobic, I was not to happy about going from room to room, especially since I had to squeeze through each doorway.
Still, the fascination of Aztec is that the lower rooms have been preserved, including the original roof beams. Here you can see the original vigas and latrillas that were built into the masonry and supported the upper rooms.
Some of the rooms were places where burials were found, often with trash piled on top.
Scholars suggest that this type of burial did not show disrespect to the dead, but honor. I guess it was all part of a sacred recycling system.
Again, an enclosed plaza served an important ceremonial function for the settlements that surrounded the Great House along the Animas River. In the middle of the plaza was the jewel of the ruins: the Great Kiva.
This is the only fully restored Great Kiva in the Southwest. It is about 41-43 feet in diameter. But an unexcavated Great Kiva nearby is even larger.
It was excavated in the 1920s by Earl Morris, who grew up in nearby Farmington, NM, surrounded by stories of the Anasazi and the many ruins.
The restored interior of the Aztec Great Kiva inspires stillness and contemplation even today.
Native Americans leave prayer offerings there, and a soundtrack of native chants played during our visit. The prominent sandstone disks helped to hold up the original roof pillars.
The axes are strictly N-S/E-W and symmetrical. The openings lead to rooms that surround the kiva.
This was important ceremonial space. On the north side was a raised room that probably served as an altar room where priests prepared to descend into the ceremonial space. The ceiling was recontructed by Morris, including the entrance from above.
Even though local citizens had a habit of breaking into the ruins, before it became a national monument, to remove artifacts (and stones and wood) for personal use, enough remained for Morris to create a nice museum. This is an original ladder from the ruins,
and this is a curious pot because of its animal figures.
Janet particularly liked this unusual textured pot.
Like so many other sites, the entire Aztec site was abandoned in the 1200s. Morris found evidence of a major fire and possible violence that would have occurred just before abandonment.
Some scholars are now suggesting that the whole Great House/Great Kiva ceremonial system was no longer working effectively and that the settlements may have been socially unable to cope with some sort of new external threat.
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