McElmo style masonry at Kin Kletso by RO

Kin Kletso is a Chacoan Ancestral Pueblo

great house A great house is a large house or mansion with luxurious appointments and great retinues of indoor and outdoor staff. The term is used mainly historically, especially of properties at the turn of the 20th century, i.e., the late Victorian or ...

and notable archaeological site located in

Chaco Culture National Historical Park Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historic Sites (United States), National Historical Park in the Southwestern United States, American Southwest hosting a concentration of pueblos. The park is located in northw ...

, southwest of

Nageezi, New Mexico Nageezi ( nv, ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in San Juan County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 296 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Farmington Metropolitan Statistical Area. A post office was established in 1941. Nagee ...

, United States. It was a medium-sized great house located west of

Pueblo Bonito Pueblo Bonito (Spanish for ''beautiful town'') is the largest and best-known great house in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, northern New Mexico. It was built by the Ancestral Puebloans who occupied the structure between AD 828 and 1126 ...

; it shows strong evidence of construction and occupation by Pueblo peoples who migrated to Chaco from the northern San Juan Basin in the time period of 1125 to 1200 ( McElmo Phase of Chacoan Architecture). From its masonry work, rectangular shape and design Kletso is identified as Pueblo III architecture by prominent Chaco archaeologists Stephen H. Lekson and Tom Windes.Lekson, S.H (Ed.), ''The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon'', page 91, School of American Research Press, 2006, They also argue that this great house was only occupied by one or two households. Fagen writes that Kletso contained around 55 rooms, four ground-floor

kiva A kiva is a space used by Puebloans for rites and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, "kiva" means a large room that is circular and underground ...

s, and a two-story cylindrical tower that may have functioned as a kiva or religious center. Evidence of an obsidian production industry were discovered here. The house was erected between 1125 and 1130..

Etymology

''Kin Kletso'' is a garbled mispronunciation of , meaning "Yellow House" in the

Navajo language Navajo or Navaho (; Navajo: or ) is a Southern Athabaskan language of the Na-Dené family, through which it is related to languages spoken across the western areas of North America. Navajo is spoken primarily in the Southwestern United Stat ...

Notes

External links

Kin Kletso
a photo gallery

References

* . Colorado Plateau Chaco Canyon Former populated places in New Mexico Chaco Culture National Historical Park Ancestral Puebloans {{NewMexico-geo-stub