Core-and-veneer masonry of the Chaco great houses
Mampostería de núcleo y chapa de los grandes edificios de Chaco
- Date
- c. 900 · confidence medium
- Place
- Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, United States
- Credited to
- Ancestral Puebloans (Chaco culture)
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Chaco buildings combine thick rubble-and-mud cores with a veneer of tabular stone, rising up to four or five storeys with thousands of pine beams hauled tens of kilometres. Walls thicken at the base to carry the upper floors.
Pueblo Bonito begins c. 850 and grows until c. 1130; beam dendrochronology underlies the chronology. The technique continues at Mesa Verde and Aztec.
What it led to
- multi-storey stone and adobe pueblos of the Southwest
- community haulage of timber over long distances
- buildings with astronomical alignments and integrated kivas