Welcome to an Encyclopædia of Aztec Ruins National Monument. | Wikimedia Commons
Welcome to an Encyclopædia of Aztec Ruins National Monument. | Wikimedia Commons
From December 21, 2022 post.
Welcome to an Encyclopædia of Aztec Ruins National Monument.
This is the 17th in a series of 26 posts looking at a topic or topics based on each successive letter of the alphabet.
Q is for Quarry.
When Ancestral Pueblo people came from Chaco to the Animas River Valley in the early 1100s, they built the Aztec West great house out of sandstone bricks. They were continuing the tradition of Chaco style architecture in the new outlier city that would become the center of the Chacoan culture.
The great houses in Chaco Canyon are built out of sandstone that was quarried right from the canyon walls. Sandstone is also common in the Aztec area, but is found slightly farther away. The bricks here were quarried from sandstone deposits that today are visible along the roads heading north towards the Colorado border. These bricks were cut and shaped at the quarry, and then had to be carried to the site. It took approximately 30 years to construct Aztec West.
Along the west wall of the great house there are three unusual, long, green stripes of stone. This greenish-black stone is called graywacke, and is a type of sandstone. The graywacke used in construction here was quarried about 3-4 miles away and carried back to the site.
Construction workers also quarried limestone from the mountains in Colorado to make the large, flat discs that the columns of the great kiva rested on as part of the foundation for that very important building.
Image descriptions: 1. One of the nearly 500 rooms of the Aztec West great house built out of sandstone blocks quarried a few miles north of the site. 2. Close up of an interior sandstone wall. 3. Two of the three greenish-black graywacke stripes along the west wall of the great house. The third strip is below ground level. After the excavation of the site, parts were backfilled to preserve the walls. 4. Three stacks of limestone discs next to the columns holding up the roof of the great kiva. There were part of the footing, or support for the original columns. NPS Photos / Jamie Peters
Original source can be found here.
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