Date of Award

6-1-2009

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences

First Advisor

Lawrence B. Conyers. Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Ingrid Tague

Third Advisor

Bonnie Clark

Fourth Advisor

Dean Saitta

Keywords

Bluff Great House, Chaco, GPR, Ground-penetrating Radar, Outlier

Abstract

The Bluff Great House is a Chaco-era monumental building, located in southeastern Utah. This site was inhabited from A.D. 700 to 1300, before and after the time when Chaco Canyon was widely considered a regional “capital”. To map the Bluff site’s architecture throughout its’ occupations, ground-penetrating radar data were collected for the site’s encircling berm, plaza, terrace, and a pithouse. Excavation data were combined with ground-penetrating radar maps, which together allowed for a spatially extensive and more temporally complete understanding of the Bluff site’s architecture. The findings of this research show that site had a series of long-term habitations, which provided a historical context for the great house. Also, the people living at the Bluff site were well connected to their region throughout its occupation. Altogether, there is little evidence from this research to suggest that the Bluff Great House was directly influenced by Chaco Canyon, but instead the great house architecture at Bluff may have been emulating many sites in the region in a style common to that time period.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Sarah M. Lowry

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

181 p.

Discipline

Archaeology, Geophysics

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