ABSTRACT
Chaco Canyon is a place that gathers. Chaco Canyon is a compelling archaeological locale well known as the center of one of the most complex sociopolitical phenomena in the ancient North American Southwest. Chaco Canyon proper is only a small part of the story, however. Ancient Chaco Canyon was not a single locality but a phenomenon that spanned a region of at least 60,000 square miles. Some colleagues are interested in Chaco Canyon primarily as home to a large community of very successful farmers, whereas others see Chaco as a potentially unique or extraordinarily complex experiment in sociopolitical hierarchy. The chapter explores using the idea of assemblage from Giles DeLeuze, by way of Miguel DeLanda, thinking about the distributed and flexible nature of the Chaco phenomenon. Chaco Canyon, in northwest New Mexico, is an aesthetically powerful place, in part because of the sky-filled topography of the Colorado Plateau.
