New World Roads: Symbols of Control and Unity.

Added December 26, 1997. Updated November 28, 2000.

New World Roads: Symbols of Control and Unity.

The lack of wheeled vehicles and large animal transport poses an interpretive problem for defining the function of wide (ca 9 m) roads linking Chacoan great house communities in northwestern New Mexico in the late 11th and early 12th centuries A.D. It is proposed that these roads, like a number of other New World road systems, were multifunctional but served primarily to reduce the effects of social unit fissioning through tangible, visible, and symbolic proof of sustained sociopolitical ties among dispersed habitation centers.

Dr. R. Gwinn Vivian

Arizona State Museum

University of Arizona

Tucson, Az 85721

USA

Tel. (520) 621-4500, Fax (520) 621-2976, rgv@u.arizona.edu

Please send comments or questions to Max Baldia.