Some Chaco Canyon pics from my recent visit

[semillama]

I participated in a tour of Chaco Canyon as part of the recent Society for Historical Archaeology conference in Albuquerque, NM. It was my first visit and it's really impressive. Having your tour conducted by a Chacoan culture specialist also helps! I highly recommend a visit. I'd like to go back in spring or summer, but having gone in the dead of winter is also cool, no crowds and the snow made for interesting photos.

I took a few photos, here's the better ones.

Small kivas at Pueblo Bonito:


Bird petroglyph:


Pueblo Bonito:


Grand Kiva at Chetro Ketl:

[pscot]

1. Nice pics

thanks for posting

[Erva]

2. Wonderful Pictures

The snow makes them even more haunting.

[L. Coyote]

3. Thanks. Nice snows. More pics here from a greener moment of the year.

http://jqjacobs.net/southwest/chaco.html

[semillama]

4. Thanks, I'd like to get back out there in the spring myself

If only for the birds that nest there, but also because our tour only scratched the surface of the area. It would be fun to camp and hike there as well.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Such wonderful images. Almost overwhelming. Have never seen any photos of the area

taken during the winter.

Thanks so much for adding this visual information.

Thanks to L. Coyote, also, for adding more to study.

[semillama]

6. What's really overwhelming

(besides the sheer scale of the architecture - the last two photos have people in them for scale) is how densly populated this canyon was. Corn fields up all the ravines, little communities on every rise. The Chaco culture is pretty astonishing, and there's a lot to learn from how they coped in a desert environment, as well as studying why they eventually quit the canyon - has a lot of relevance to the current situation in the Southwest. In fact, the latest issue of Nat Geo has a very good article on just that.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Thanks for pointing out the people. Pueblo Bonito, the 3rd is particularly impressive.

It almost gets the best of you trying to imagine how the complete buildings would have seemed. Overwhelming.

There's so much to learn, so little time!

Thanks, again.

[Cabcere]

7. Oh, that is so cool!

:D I remember reading "The Chaco Meridian" for my intro archeology class...fascinating stuff. And those are great pictures! Thanks for sharing with us. :hi: