In this paper, I make the simple argument that the rock art in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico needs to be taken into consideration to understand Chaco culture. It is imperative that we pay attention to this ample graphic component of Chaco’s past in order to clarify perceptions of Chaco itself, as well as its place and social status in its regional context. Within the wide scope of archaeology in the Americas and elsewhere in the world, ancient images are examined for the insights they provide into the social affiliations, ideologies, cosmologies, and worldviews of the past—cultural dimensions that are often best expressed in the arts, including various graphic media. In the history of southwestern archaeology, however, rock art, a prolific visual document, has been treated as a thing apart, and its potential contribution to understanding the past is consistently ignored. In its disregard for the wealth of imagery displayed in the canyon’s landscape, archaeological research in Chaco Canyon follows this pattern to the detriment of our knowledge. The defining characteristic of Chaco culture is its architecture. While hundreds of single-story small house sites are fully contemporaneous with the large multi-storied buildings, Chaco Canyon is well known for the latter—the spectacular “great houses” built by the Ancestral Pueblo people (also known as the Anasazi) largely between 900 and 1140 CE (Figure 1). These planned constructions may contain hundreds of rooms and large open plazas, and solidly built, they have endured the test of time. Associated are elaborate water-control systems, roads, and great kivas, evoking many questions in regard to the nature of Chaco society and its regional significance. The distinctions evoked by the great houses, however, are not apparent when it comes to ceramics and rock art, both of which, in general, conform to regional norms. Before the initiation by the National Park Service of the Chaco Project in 1971, the Pueblo ruins in Chaco Canyon were considered just another facet of the widespread Ancestral Pueblo farming culture that stretched

中文翻译：

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查科岩画很重要

在本文中，我提出了一个简单的论点，即需要考虑新墨西哥州西北部查科峡谷的岩石艺术才能了解查科文化。我们必须关注查科过去的这个丰富的图形组成部分，以澄清对查科本身的看法，以及它在区域背景中的位置和社会地位。在美洲和世界其他地方的广泛考古范围内，对古代图像进行了检查，以了解它们对过去的社会关系、意识形态、宇宙观和世界观的洞察力——这些文化维度通常在艺术中得到最好的表达，包括各种图形媒体。然而，在西南考古史上，岩石艺术作为一种多产的视觉文献，却被视为一种独立的事物，它对理解过去的潜在贡献一直被忽视。查科峡谷的考古研究无视峡谷景观中显示的丰富图像，遵循这种模式，损害了我们的知识。查科文化的决定性特征是它的建筑。虽然数百个单层小房子与大型多层建筑完全同时代，但查科峡谷以后者而闻名——由祖先普韦布洛人（也称为阿纳萨齐人）建造的壮观的“大房子”，主要是900 和 1140 CE（图 1）。这些规划中的建筑可能包含数百个房间和大型开放广场，而且建筑坚固，经受住了时间的考验。与之相关的是精心设计的水控制系统、道路和伟大的基瓦斯，引发了许多关于查科社会的性质及其区域意义的问题。然而，当谈到陶瓷和岩画时，大房子所引起的区别并不明显，这两者总体上都符合区域规范。在国家公园管理局于 1971 年启动查科项目之前，查科峡谷的普韦布洛遗址被认为只是广泛的祖先普韦布洛农业文化的另一个方面。