Was the road system associated with Chaco Canyon used for transporting goods to and from Mesoamerica?
The quantity of material entering Chaco Canyon from Mesoamerica is really quite small–feathers, copper bells, and shell being the most prominent (although shell also came via the Hohokam from the Gulf of California). The conventional wisdom is that these items are not *directly* being exchanged with Mesoamerican groups; ie, there were not traders who walked back and forth the entire distance between the two areas. Rather, the common view is that these materials were “down-the-line” trade, casually exchanged from neighbor to neighbor and eventually ending up in Chaco and other areas. It’s hard to evaluate whether this view is correct or not, but there is some evidence to suggest that it is. For example, someone once estimated that if you took all of the bells and birds and feathers brought into the Chaco world, and put them all together, they could have been brought to the area using only a single trader making only a few trips. So, there is no reason to build a road system just for th
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