In November 2021, President Joe Biden announced establishment of a 10-mile buffer barring oil and gas drilling leases around Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. The 20-year ban, long sought by indigenous tribes, buys time for studies documenting the ancestral Puebloan site as a cultural resource. Historically, the 53-square-mile canyon area, named a National Park in 1907, once included many roads and trade routes and has long been regarded as a vast ceremonial center for ancient residents. Other features include 25 multi-roomed “great houses” and structures with astronomical alignments. A recent interdisciplinary
study argues that Chaco Canyon was inhabited, and that a transition from a foraging way of life to a settled agricultural mode cleared forests and caused unsustainable erosion. This report cites thinning of woodlands overlapping with the emergence of farming of corn, beans, and squash. Some woodlands survived; residents protected piñon trees as a valuable source of nuts and depleted stands of juniper used for fuel. Over the span of a millennium, the authors say, the impacts of human habitation combined to render an arid region even drier and less productive, finally becoming uninhabitable around 1250 CE.
MANFRED GOTTSCHALK/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Chaco Canyon Catches a Break
Puebloan Pueblo Structures at Chaco Canyon leap into view in an aerial photo of the abandoned settlement.
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SMITHSONIAN LIBRARIES; METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; JOEL CARILLET/GETTY IMAGES
by Sarah Richardson
