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Published online on September 25, 2001, 10.1073/pnas.211305498
PNAS | October 9, 2001 | vol. 98 | no. 21 | 11891-11896


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Geology
 Strontium isotopes reveal distant sources of architectural timber in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Nathan B. English*,dagger , Julio L. BetancourtDagger , Jeffrey S. Dean§, and Jay Quade

* School of Renewable Natural Resources, § Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, and  Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; and Dagger  U.S. Geological Survey, Desert Laboratory, Tucson, AZ 85745

Edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA, and approved August 15, 2001 (received for review June 15, 2001)

Between A.D. 900 and 1150, more than 200,000 conifer trees were used to build the prehistoric great houses of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in what is now a treeless landscape. More than one-fifth of these timbers were spruce (Picea) or fir (Abies) that were hand-carried from isolated mountaintops 75-100 km away. Because strontium from local dust, water, and underlying bedrock is incorporated by trees, specific logging sites can be identified by comparing 87Sr/86Sr ratios in construction beams from different ruins and building periods to ratios in living trees from the surrounding mountains. 87Sr/86Sr ratios show that the beams came from both the Chuska and San Mateo (Mount Taylor) mountains, but not from the San Pedro Mountains, which are equally close. Incorporation of logs from two sources in the same room, great house, and year suggest stockpiling and intercommunity collaboration at Chaco Canyon. The use of trees from both the Chuska and San Mateo mountains, but not from the San Pedro Mountains, as early as A.D. 974 suggests that selection of timber sources was driven more by regional socioeconomic ties than by a simple model of resource depletion with distance and time.

dagger To whom reprint requests should be addressed at: School of Renewable Natural Resources, 325 BioSciences East, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. E-mail: nenglish{at}ag.arizona.edu.

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.211305498
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