The possibility that major Chacoan ceremonial sites were positioned by large-scale geometric relationships to significant natural features, mostly mountains, has been described in two recent articles by the present author*. Other literature in mainstream Southwest archaeology also focuses on similar issues relating to native ritual processes of making connections between spirits and humans, most particularly along North-South axis mundis. In addition to research on social space, the author, an architect-anthropologist, also teaches design studios at a University in the Southwest. This Fall semester, his group of fifth-year architecture and graduate level landscape architecture students are designing a hypothetical “Chacoan Georitual Visitor Center on I-40”. The class visited Chaco Canyon and then selected different sites adjacent to potential visitors on I-40. In most cases the sites are associated with one or more of the large-scale Chacoan axes running across their once sacred landscape and I-40. In addition to describing two or three of the most successful projects, the conference paper addresses a number of theoretical issues that drove the projects. Most prominent of these is the need to interpret the ancient sense of large-scale ritual landscape structure and symbolism. While most of the project sites are relatively large for an interpretative center, nevertheless it remained paramount to extend the visitor’s conception of space to the largest scale possible. A second and related preoccupation of the designers has been the replication of ritual spatial structure and sequence through devices such as axis, threshold, opposition and the like. A third issue is the distinction between visitor’s experience of more rational, educational content, and meanings that are more affective, poetic or ritualistic in essence. We are also attempting to invoke specific social responses in the visitors, which in part involves orchestrating between individual and group participation.

return to conference participants

return home