Carbon 14 dating of scarlet macaw remains from Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico indicates that interaction between the pre-Hispanic Pueblo people and Mesoamerica – the term scientists use to refer to Mexico and parts of northern Central America – began more than 100 years earlier than previously thought.
Aerial view of Pueblo Bonito. Image credit: Bob Adams / CC BY-SA 3.0.
Archaeologists have known for more than a century that the Pueblo people acquired goods from Mesoamerica, including marine shells from the Gulf of California, raw copper and crafted copper bells from west Mexico, cacao from the Neotropics, and tropical birds, including colorful parrots known as scarlet macaws.
Remains of scarlet macaws have been recovered from many settlements in the Southwest, particularly at Chaco Canyon, a major cultural center that was densely occupied between about 800 and 1200 CE and had more than a dozen multi-storied ‘great houses.’
These great houses contained clustered complexes of rooms for large gatherings, lodgings, storage, burial and religious rituals. Pueblo Bonito, with about 650 rooms in the largest of the great houses of Chaco Canyon, is where the remains of 30 scarlet macaws were recovered.
The scarlet macaw (Ara macao) is a species of large parrot with red, blue and yellow feathers. These birds are native to humid forests in tropical America so their presence at Chaco Canyon indicates the existence of long-distance procurement networks often characteristic of a complex society.
The rare birds were a sign of prestige and their feathers were important as ceremonial objects for their colorful variety, not locally common among the area’s native birds. The bright colors signified different directions, such as red for south and blue or green for west, for example.
It was traditionally thought that the Pueblo people did not bring the macaws back to the settlement until 1040 CE. But new radiocarbon dating of the bird remains discovered in the settlement is changing that view.
The radiocarbon dating project, co-led by Dr Adam Watson from the American Museum of Natural History, Prof Stephen Plog from the University of Virginia and Dr Douglas Kennett from Pennsylvania State University, showed that the macaw remains came from as early as the late 800s to mid 900s CE.
The earlier dating suggests that the rise of Pueblo sociopolitical complexity developed earlier than previously thought.
“By directly dating the macaws, we have demonstrated the existence of long-distance networks throughout much of this settlement’s history,” said Dr Watson, who is the lead author on the paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our findings suggest that rather than the acquisition of macaws being a side effect of the rise of Chacoan society, there was a causal relationship. The ability to access these trade networks and the ritual power associated with macaws and their feathers may have been important to forming these hierarchies in the first place.”
Prof Plog added: “we propose that the hierarchical sociopolitical foundation of Chacoan society was established during the initial era of construction of the great houses and that this foundation was reinforced during the late 9th and 10th centuries by the acquisition of scarlet macaws and other cosmologically powerful agents from Mesoamerica.”
“Sociopolitical hierarchies evolved over the course of nearly two centuries before taking the more visible forms seen in the Chaco florescence. As in many parts of the world, this was a long-term process rather than a brief, abrupt transformation.”
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Adam S. Watson et al. Early procurement of scarlet macaws and the emergence of social complexity in Chaco Canyon, NM. PNAS, published online June 22, 2015; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1509825112
