The Andrews Community: A Chacoan Outlier in the Red Mesa Valley, New Mexico

Abstract

A number of explanatory models perceive Chaco Canyon, New Mexico as the hub of a centralized social agency that expanded outward in the latter half of the 11th century A.C., during Anasazi times. Such arguments are based in part on the appearance of architecturally distinctive Chacoan great houses in outlying communities during this era. The Andrews community, an outlier located in the Red Mesa Valley 80 km south of Chaco Canyon, was occupied from the A.C. 880s to the A.C. 1070s; a great house was constructed in the midst of the settlement at around A.C. 1020. Several lines of evidence suggest that the Andrews great house need not have been constructed by an expansionist Chaco Canyon presence but rather might have been built by the inhabitants of the community for local purposes involving competitive emulation and/or the staging of ritual events. This finding weakens explanatory models that rest upon the assumption of centralized Chacoan control of the San Juan Basin or a centralized Chacoan source for all great house architecture.

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