The gems, which were often embedded into jewelry and figurines, were very important to the Puebloan culture, and akin to modern-day diamonds, Hull told Live Science. While most every scholar recognizes that Chaco was centrally organized, the nature of that organization has remained maddeningly opaque., Yet Minnis and others question whether the team is right to call this elite group a dynasty, a term that usually refers to kings and queens who exercise sole rule over vast territories and populations. Pueblo Bonito - Wikipedia . In Photos: 'Alien' Skulls Reveal Odd, Ancient . Next, the team analyzed the ratios of copper to hydrogen isotopes of 74 turquoise artifacts from Puebloan sites in the San Juan Basin, southern Utah and the Moapa Valley in Nevada. The team is now looking to further map the movement of the blue-green mineral across the southwestern United States, in hopes of learning more about the individual groups that coveted turquoise and were involved in the massive trade network. Pueblo peoples like the Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni consider it a home of their ancestors. Red Tank Draw, AZ ( Hand). Then, two things happened: either Chaos or Gaia created the universe as we know it, or Ouranos and Tethys gave birth to the first beings. Within minutes, during one moonless night in 1996, a few thousand photons from this powerful light landed on the mirror of a telescope in New Mexico. Archaeologists refer to it as a great house in recognition of its massive scale, and often describe it as the centre of the Chaco world. Publications in Archaeology 18A, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Santa Fe, NM, 1981. Over 16,000 artifacts, mainly ceramics, were collected from 167 sites (Pierson Survey Sites) by Lloyd Pierson in 1947, while he was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, and during a second survey in 1960, while he was employed as an NPS archaeologist. Samples have been taken from all the great houses in Chaco Canyon, and cores and cross-sections have been loaned to the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research (LTRR) at the University of Arizona for species ID and dating. The museum object collection is currently closed; the archives are open by appointment only. But between the two, you have an isotope overlap that is pretty distinct for each resource." The Architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007). Todays Pueblo peoples claim, on fairly firm archaeological grounds, to be the direct descendants of the Chacoans; so do the Navajo, on whose land Chaco Canyon now sits. What is important about this study is the strong case the authors make for significance and meaning. They analyzed 96 skeletons excavated from the Pueblo Bonito site, the largest great house in Chaco Canyon. Using biology, art, architecture, and spatial distribution they have built a substantial body of evidence where we only had some intriguing hints before. Kelley Hays-Gilpin , an anthropologist at Northern Arizona University concluded.