Last weekend - back when it was still August - the interns took a weekend camping trip to New Mexico. We're only about an hour from the border, and it took us about two hours to arrive at our first destination: Salmon ruins. Salmon (pronounced Sal-mun after a local family, not the fish) is a site known as an "outlier" to the political/social/economic system of Chaco Canyon. Think of the Roman Empire, and the way that Roman architecture spread throughout Europe in the early centuries AD. Chaco was kind of like that - and associated sites are identifiable by similar architectural traits, burial patterns, kiva styles, and a lot of attention paid to astrological alignment, among other factors. Salmon archaeologist Paul Reed gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of the site - meaning we got to learn about cool things like potential cremation remains and coprolites (yep, centuries-old poop) - and the destruction and reconstruction of Salmon's great kiva after a huge flood in the twelfth century.
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| Great House (Pueblo Bonito) |
After our tour of Salmon, we drove another hour or two south to Chaco Culture National Historic Park. Chaco has been on my list of places-to-visit since I first learned about it my freshman year of college. As I have mentioned before, Chaco Canyon was (debatably) a huge political/social/economic system operating in the southwest between the ninth and twelfth centuries AD. Chaco is known for its monumental architecture: three or four story "great houses" - village-size communities, and "great kivas," really big variations of the circular underground religious structures still used in modern Pueblo societies. T-shaped doors, architecture with small, narrow stones and bands of dark stones, and "chinking stones" are also traits associated with Chaco. (Are you still awake?)
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| Great Kiva (Chetro Ketl) |
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| T-shaped door (Pueblo del Arroyo) |
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| Banded masonry (Pueblo Alto complex) |
We spent the weekend hiking and touring Chaco Canyon's bounty of great houses. We also saw a lot of petroglyphs (pictures carved into rock), and some pictographs (pictures painted on rock) and did a lot of stargazing - there were some pretty cool shooting stars. There is very little light pollution in Chaco, and we went to a presentation on astronomy given by a park ranger on Friday night, and even got to look through a gigantic telescope.
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| Petroglyph |
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| Supernova pictograph |
It was my first experience camping since the fateful night freshman year when I sprained my ankle. Definitely a fun (injury-free!) weekend. I'm pretty sure I ate my month's allowance of peanut butter in three days. Peanut butter on both sides of the bread keeps the bread un-soggy from the jelly. A peanut butter apple with granola is also a lovely breakfast. Peanut butter is pretty much indestructible, and delicious.
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