A great house is a large, multi-storied

Ancestral Puebloan The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, an ...

structure; they were built between 850 and 1150. Whereas the term "great house" typically refers to structures in

Chaco Canyon Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in the American Southwest hosting a concentration of pueblos. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a remote c ...

, they are also found in more northerly locations in the

San Juan Basin The San Juan Basin is a geologic structural basin located near the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States. The basin covers 7,500 square miles and resides in northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and parts of Utah ...

, including the

Mesa Verde region The Mesa Verde Region is a portion of the Colorado Plateau in the United States that extends through parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. It is bounded by the San Juan River to the south, the Piedra River to the east, the San Juan Mountain ...

. The purpose of the structures is unclear, but may have been to house large numbers of people, religious leaders, or royalty. They were designed and constructed to provide shelter to inhabitants in an arid climate and had protective walls and small windows.

History and purpose

Great house construction flourished during the late 11th and early 12th centuries, and may have begun as early as 800. Mesa Verdeans usually built their great houses on the site of older villages. The earliest examples of structures similar to great houses have been found along the

Mimbres River The Mimbres is a river in southwestern New Mexico. Course The Mimbres forms from snowpack and runoff on the southwestern slopes of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness in the Black Range at in Grant County. The river ends in the Guzmán Basin, a smal ...

in New Mexico. Archeologists differ as to their purpose, but they might have been residences for large numbers of people, or ceremonial centers that only priests occupied. Archeologist Stephen H. Lekson has proposed that they might have been the palaces of Puebloan royalty, particularly those found at Chaco Canyon. Additionally, Chaco Canyon area was a regional trading center and approximately half of the total area of the structures were storage rooms.

Design

Spaces were generally divided into four sections aligned with the cardinal directions, which held religious significance. The great houses at Pueblo Alto were aligned along a north–south axis. Entrances to structures were generally south or southeast facing. This provided shade from summer sun and warmth from winter sun. The back of the buildings were joined together with a large wall to provide shelter from wind. At the center of the structure was a plaza, meant to serve as a community center. It was also common to have ball courts and

platform mound Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

s. Structures utilized thick walls, small entrances, and small windows to help protect inhabitants in an arid environment. Walls were constructed with stone and adobe plaster. Roofs were made from timber and have decayed faster than the walls that supported them.

Influence

Mary Colter Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...

designed buildings in the Southwest, including

Hopi House Hopi House is located on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, within Grand Canyon National Park in the U.S. state of Arizona. Built in 1904 as concessioner facilities at the South Rim were being developed, it is the first of eight projects at th ...

which was modeled after Puebloan great houses and built to provide shelter for visitors and a reference for scale. Hopi House was her first work in the Grand Canyon area, completed in 1904, and was constructed before the area was dedicated as a national park.

References

;Bibliography * * {{authority control Archaeological sites in New Mexico Chaco Canyon Chaco Culture National Historical Park Colorado Plateau Ancestral Puebloans