Post-Chacoan Social Integration at the Hinkson Site, New Mexico

Abstract

The century following the collapse of Chaco is often viewed as a time of cultural backsliding. However, imposing sites with Chaco-inspired public architecture provide evidence of large communities, dating between A.D. 1200 and 1275, that laid the organizational foundations of well-known Pueblo IV towns. This article reports on excavations at one such Zuni-area settlement, the Hinkson site. In this site, 32 residential room blocks surround a great house complex that includes an unroofed, oversize great kiva, a nazha, and roads. The Hinkson site appears to be the center of a 250 square kilometer community with 70 room blocks and nearly 900 rooms. Recognition of these multi-room block communities with public architecture permits a reformulation of current concepts of post-Chacoan, Anasazi social integration and provides a more plausible bridge between the Chacoan and Pueblo IV periods.