Casas Grandes facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Casas Grandes |
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View of a section in Paquimé, Casas Grandes
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| Location | Chihuahua, Mexico |
| Built | 1130 CE |
| Rebuilt | 1350 CE |
| Official name: Archaeological Zone of Paquimé, Casas Grandes | |
| Type | Cultural |
| Criteria | iii, iv |
| Designated | 1998 (22nd session) |
| Reference no. | 560rev |
| State Party | Mexico |
| Region | Latin America and the Caribbean |
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Casas Grandes (which means Great Houses in Spanish) is an ancient archaeological site. You can find it in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. People from the Mogollon culture built this amazing place.
Casas Grandes is also known as Paquimé. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This means it's a very important place for everyone to protect. Since 2015, it's also been a "Pueblo Mágico" (Magical Town).
This site is one of the biggest and most complex places built by the Mogollon culture. People started living here after 1130 AD. The larger buildings, which had many stories, were built after 1350 AD. The community was left empty around 1450 AD.
Casas Grandes is a key archaeological area in northwestern Mexico. It shows how the Mogollon culture spread. It connects to other ancient sites in Arizona and New Mexico in the United States.
The Casas Grandes complex is in a wide, fertile valley. It's next to the Casas Grandes or San Miguel River. This location is about 56 kilometers (35 miles) south of Janos. It's also about 240 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of Chihuahua City. The people living here used irrigation to grow their food.
The archaeological area is part of the modern municipality of Casas Grandes. Native groups have lived in this valley for thousands of years.
Contents
Life in Ancient Paquimé
Between 1130 and 1300 AD, people in this area started living together. They formed small settlements in the wide, fertile valley. The biggest settlement we know of today is called Paquimé or Casas Grandes.
It began as a group of more than 20 house clusters. Each cluster had its own plaza and a wall around it. These first homes were single-story buildings made of adobe. They all shared a common water system.
Evidence shows that Paquimé had a very advanced water system. It included underground drains and reservoirs. There were channels to bring water to homes. They even had a sewage system to take waste away.
Around 1340 AD, Casas Grandes was burned. But the people rebuilt it! They replaced the small buildings with multi-story apartment buildings. Casas Grandes ended up with about 2,000 rooms connected to each other. These rooms were made of adobe.
The city also had I-shaped Mesoamerican ballcourts. There were stone platforms and special mounds shaped like animals. It also had a market area for trading.
About 350 smaller settlements have been found nearby. Some are as far as 70 kilometers (43 miles) away. Experts think Casas Grandes directly controlled a small area. This area stretched about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the city. The main city might have had about 2,500 people. Perhaps 10,000 people lived in the whole area it controlled.
Amazing Crafts and Trade
The people of Casas Grandes were skilled craftspeople. They made copper bells and ornaments. They also created a lot of pottery. They even made beads from seashells. These special items were probably traded far and wide.
Casas Grandes pottery is often white or reddish. It has designs in blue, red, brown, or black. Sometimes, the pottery was shaped like human figures or animals. This pottery was traded to places as far north as New Mexico and Arizona. It was also traded throughout northern Mexico.
Some experts believe that Paquimé, Chaco Canyon, and Aztec Ruins are connected. They are all lined up on a similar north-south line. Chaco was important first, then Aztec, then Paquimé. This might mean that leaders at these sites shared ideas. However, many agree that Paquimé's roots are mostly from the Mogollon culture.
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Ramos Polychrome olla with macaw symbols
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Ramos Polychrome olla with Southwestern designs
Exploring the Ancient Ruins
When the Spanish arrived, they found many artificial mounds at Casas Grandes. People searching for treasures often found stone axes, corn-grinders (called metates), and many kinds of earthenware pottery.
Before archaeologists started digging, large parts of the ancient buildings were still standing. These ruins were about 800 meters (2,600 feet) from the modern town. The buildings were made from sun-dried blocks of mud and gravel. These blocks were about 56 centimeters (22 inches) thick. They were usually about 0.9 meters (3 feet) long. The thick walls were probably covered with plaster inside and out.
One main building stretched 240 meters (800 feet) from north to south. It was 76 meters (250 feet) from east to west. It looked like a rectangle. It seemed to have three separate parts connected by walkways or lower buildings.
A stone wall and water pools divided the city into eastern and western halves. The buildings on the east were straight, adobe structures. These were mostly for homes and workshops. The buildings on the west were open earth mounds lined with stone. These were used for public gatherings. This design shows a mix of ideas. The east side looks like buildings from the Pueblo people of North America. The west side looks like cultures from Mesoamerica to the south.
The homes at Paquimé were round or half-round pit houses. They also had adobe room blocks built around open areas. The living spaces varied in size. Some were tiny, like a closet, while others were large courtyards. Some walls still stand 12 to 15 meters (40 to 50 feet) high. This suggests the buildings were once six or seven stories tall!
The settlement had special T-shaped doorways. It also had stone disks at the bottom of columns that held up ceilings. These features are typical of Pueblo architecture. Casas Grandes had ballcourts, but they were smaller than at other big sites. The ballcourts at Paquimé were shaped like the letter "I". This is like those found in Mesoamerica. They were not oval-shaped like those of the Hohokam culture in Arizona.
An enormous 2,268 kilogram (5,000 pound) iron meteorite was found in one of the rooms. It was carefully wrapped in linen. You can see this meteorite today at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
During digs, archaeologists found eggshell pieces and bird bones. They also found traces of wooden perches. There was even a row of macaw pens in the middle of the site! Experts believe the community brought scarlet macaws from Mesoamerica. They raised them because their colorful feathers were important in ancient rituals.
Many Casas Grandes pottery pieces are kept at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures in Utah. Stanford University in California also has pottery from the site. The British Museum in London bought 23 pottery vessels from the site in 1979. A new exhibit about Paquimé is at the Amerind Museum. Most of the other items found at Paquimé are cared for by INAH in Casas Grandes and Chihuahua City.
The ruins of Casas Grandes are similar to other ancient sites. These include ruins near Gila and Salinas in New Mexico. They are also like sites in Arizona and Colorado. This suggests they were all part of or connected to the Mogollon culture. Some early researchers thought they were related to the modern-day Hopi People. However, today's experts are not sure who the direct descendants of the Casas Grandes people are.
Symbols and Art at Paquimé
Iconography means using pictures or symbols to show ideas. At Casas Grandes, the art and symbols are very important. They help us understand how men and women lived. They also show us about their daily tasks, trade, and religious ceremonies.
Archaeologists found small figures called effigies. These figures clearly show differences between males and females. The way the figures sit, their body shapes, what they are doing, and their face decorations tell us a lot.
The artists of Casas Grandes showed many behaviors and beliefs. They showed rules about how to sit. They also showed ritual activities like smoking. And they showed supernatural beings like horned or feathered serpents.
Based on these figures, archaeologists think that both women's and men's activities were valued. Social differences were more about a person's status or group, not just their gender. For example, male figures often sat with their legs bent close to their bodies. They had symbols like pound signs and horned serpents. They were sometimes shown smoking. Female figures often had larger midsections and sat with their legs stretched out. They had modified pound signs and bird symbols. They were shown holding children and pots, and sometimes nursing. These figures show us how the people of Casas Grandes thought society should work.
Why Casas Grandes Was Built and Left
There are different ideas about who lived in Casas Grandes. But most experts agree it was part of the Mogollon culture. This is because it's connected to other sites like Forty Houses (97 kilometers or 60 miles south) and TJ Ruins and Gila Cliff (320 kilometers or 200 miles north).
Three main ideas try to explain why Casas Grandes existed:
- Trading Center: One idea is that Casas Grandes was a quiet place until about 1200 CE. Then, traders (called pochteca) from the Aztec empire or other southern states turned it into a big trading hub.
- Northern Influence: Another idea is that important leaders from the Ancestral Puebloans in the north built it. They might have left places like Chaco Canyon when those areas declined.
- Local Growth: The third idea is that Casas Grandes grew on its own. It became a powerful community in its region. It then adopted some religious and social customs from the Mesoamerican civilizations.
Experts generally agree that trade happened between Mesoamerica, Aridoamerica, and the American Southwest. However, it wasn't a huge, planned trading system. But the buildings across these areas do share some common knowledge.
Casas Grandes was abandoned around 1450. We don't know if people left slowly over many years or quickly. The Spanish explorer Francisco de Ibarra found the site in 1565. Local nomadic people told him that a war caused the people of Casas Grandes to leave. They said the inhabitants moved north. This story suggests they might have joined the Pueblos along the Rio Grande in New Mexico.
Other ideas suggest the people moved west to Sonora. They might have joined or become the Opata people. The Opata lived in small, organized city-states when the Spanish arrived. It's also possible that people left Casas Grandes because they found better opportunities elsewhere. Other communities in the Southwest also moved to new homes.
We don't know what language the people of Casas Grandes spoke. Because of the Mesoamerican influence, Nahuatl might have been spoken a lot. But it was probably not their main language.
See also
In Spanish: Paquimé para niños
