ABSTRACT
During the A.D. eleventh and early twelfth centuries, Chaco Canyon was the most influential center in the North American Southwest. Chaco Canyon was the center of a phenomenon: a set of ideological principles that were materialized in patterns of ritual practice by disparate autonomous communities. The ceremonial primacy of the kin groups who first introduced Chacoan ceremonies into an area are evident in the patterned deposition of sacred materials and ancestral bodies within the oldest sections of the earliest Chacoan great houses. In these spaces, ritual practice entangled the remains of the corporate kin group with material indices of powerful places, plants, and animals, naturalizing a connection between elite families and the natural forces that governed their world. This practice transcended Chaco Canyon in the post-Chacoan era at Salmon Ruin, Aztec West, and Wupatki Pueblo. The founders of Chacoan cults in new territories replicated symbolic and material elements of Chacoan power, allowing these peripheral centers to flourish even as Chaco Canyon fell.
