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National Geographic : 1982 Nov
Contents
diversion dams the Anasazi managed to con trol and distribute this flow-an ingenious means of irrigating without a river." S LABORERS constructed the great pueblos, at least 70 communities, similar in design but generally smaller in scale, were rising out side the canyon. As close as a few miles, as distant as 100, these outliers often included a great kiva and a multistory central house, built with core-arid-veneer masonry. Most obviously were preplanned, and many appear to have been built from a single, standardized design. Few outliers have been excavated by ar chaeologists. But many have yielded to the shovels and bulldozers of pothunters. In 1967 this appeared to be the fate of a mammoth outlier known as the Salmon ru ins, 40 miles north of Chaco on the banks of the San Juan River. A developer was buying the mound to subdivide into ten-foot "dig ging rights" for sale to pothunters. Seventy two hours before the deal closed, nearby residents hastily organized a door-to-door campaign and scraped up funds to make the down payment. Excavating the massive ruin, however, would require a multimillion-dollar archae ological effort. The local residents enlisted the help of Dr. Cynthia Irwin-Williams, an archaeologist then at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales. After intensive fund raising and lobbying, one of the nation's largest digs began pouring forth information about the Chacoan outlier. "The entire complex of nearly 300 rooms was built according to a preconceived plan," said Dr. Irwin-Williams. "Begun in 1088, it was virtually complete only six years later. Loggers journeyed to Colorado's La Plata Mountains, more than 75 miles away, to cut huge beams. The stonework was BOTH BY DEWITTJONES 579
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