Today was amazing. I have a new love....Masonry. Chaco Canyon was absolutely phenomenal. Chaco Canyon hosts the densest and most preserved pueblos in the Southwest. The Chacoan Ruins were built between 850 A.D to 1150 A.D.
Now that you`ve had a brief history lesson let me tell you about our day. We arrived at the meet-up site at 8am. Then drove the 1.5hrs out to the canyon. Spent all day hiking around these different archeoligcal ruin sites (10ish miles total) then headed back to get car. This was an incredible trip and I would highly suggest getting a tour instead of trying to go out by yourself. The knowledge our guide Larry had was amazing. Speaking of Larry, here he is with Walt and I after our long day. ( I am so burnt)
We were able to not only walk around some of the kevas and housing structures but were able to step inside some of them as well. The Keva was where ceremonies and meetings were held and around that were large structures made up of 10-100 rooms for families to live in. One of the largest sites were were able to see was 3 acres in total and was 4 stories high. Sadly Giant rocks crushed the surviving 4th floor so you can only see a small bit of it standing.
The interesting thing was that we were mostly walking along the 2nd floor because the 1st was covered with so much dirt from the years. The people of this time era were short so some of us struggled to get through doorways. They were anywhere between 4`10 for women and 5`4 for men (my kind of people)
The wood you see is part of an intact ceiling from a small room that I had to crawl into. Walt sacrificed me. Was incredible to look up and see preserved what people a thousand years ago would see.
Now onto the part that I focused a majority of my day asking questions about...Masonry. The effort these people put in to make their structures was crazy. The stone work has lasted so long and we had the opportunity to also see a room that still had original plaster on the walls. There are 6 types of stones structure styles to be found along the ruins.
Type 1 and 2 are normally larger stones with large sections of mortar as well. In the empty parts there is chinking which are small pieces of stone.
Type 3 and 4 are a single line of large stone then two to three layers of smaller stone with mortar in between. This type most likely came about due to the lack of large stone available. The structures weren`t built all at once (over hundreds of years) and the Chacoans didn't have the means to face the canyon wall to get stone from there.
Type 5 and 6 is mostly small pieces of stone with very little mortar. This is thought to be because there was signs of a very long drought making mortar hard to make.
Each of these types can be seen throughout the ruins. It is amazing that after thousands of years these ruins are still standing. The roofs have since fallen apart as have most of the floors but the structure itself still stands. The Chacoans built a place to last and although they moved on their style and culture is preserved today.
I hope you enjoyed my long post for today. There was so much information and incredible views that its hard to get it all down in words. If you ever want to listen to me ramble about today's trip feel free to ask (or dont because i might just ramble anyways)
TTFN,
Ashley
