Conch Shell Trumpets and The Chacoan Great Houses
Research suggests conch shell trumpet sounds influenced Chacoan communities.
Our everyday lives are filled with sensory experiences, from sound to touch, sight to smell and taste. Food taste will inform what we like to eat, the sound of a bell will signal it’s time for class, and the smell of spring flowers may bring back memories.
If our daily lives are rich with sensory experiences, it is not hard to imagine they were integral to the lives of our ancestors. But, unlike food, flowers, and bells, which are maintained and evidence of their existence excavated centuries later, sight and sound are not preserved in archaeology.
Or do they?
While direct evidence for sound and sight is rare, they may be found indirectly by the objects and structures that made them. For the most part, studies will model the lines of sight within archaeological contexts, i.e., structures were built on top of hills for better visibility or made of certain elements that would reflect the sunlight at specific times of the day.
I await many examples of how sound may inform where and how people live. When building an airport, developers consider many factors, including how the sound of the planes will affect the surrounding community. Similarly, a new homeowner may choose not to live in a specific area because of its proximity to the airport. Could sound have been a factor ancient societies considered when building their homes and cities?
A recent study by Van Dyke and her colleagues suggests the Chacoan communities of the Colorado Plateau may have done just this. The researchers modeled ancient soundscapes (acoustic environments) of five Chacoan communities, whose habitation area surrounded central great houses. The research shows that the habituated environment surrounding these great houses was within the audible range of a conch-shell trumpet. This means whenever anyone blew a conch-shell trumpet from atop one of the houses, everyone in the surrounding community could hear it.
History of the Chaco Canyon
Chaco Canyon was once the center of the Puebloan world. An ancestral group of Native Americans that existed around 100–1600. Today, their descendants comprise various tribes in the American Southwest, including the Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna. The Chacoans were a specific group of Puebloans who made Chaco Canyon home.
These Chacoan societies flourished between 850 and 1150. Their inhabitants erected massive sandstone canyon houses, some of which had walls standing eight meters high and buildings up to five stories tall. They built great kivas (chambers built partially or fully underground) where dancers appeared to rise straight out of the flames. They also constructed ancient observatories and magnificent roads. Some of these constructions were the most important structures built in North America until the 19th century.
Pueblo Bonito was the largest of all the great houses, boasting 800 rooms, including one where red macaw parrots were housed. The building was not constructed in one go but in phases, constantly being added onto by the next generation. Nor was it always filled to the brim. Although it had 800 rooms, they were not continuously occupied and may have been used for storage.
In addition to the monumental great houses, some 200 smaller houses dot the surrounding landscape, covering an area of approximately 60000 square miles (~155,399.4 square km). That’s almost the size of Florida, Suriname, or Uruguay and just a little larger than Greece or Nepal.
Caches of objects were preserved within these great house communities, adding credence to the beauty and wealth. The artifacts included painted and carved flowers and birds, decorated baskets, jars to store cacao, and delicate shells and turquoise jewelry.
The surrounding landscape was no barren wasteland; within it were astronomical structures, and ancient rock art mirrored the ancients’ worldview and the role of the celestial and terrestrial beings that inhabited them.
However, after 1150, the construction of these mega-structures ceased, and the surrounding populations declined.
Today, it is a landscape sacred to the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, the Dine, and many other groups that call the Southwest home. Sadly, despite its status as a UNESCO World Heritage site and a nature reserve, coal mining and oil reserves threaten much of the incredible Chaco landscape.
The Chaco Landscape Sensory Experience
If you stand on the Colorado Plateau on a clear day, you can see over 100 km into the distance. The dramatic far-off mountain peaks and occasional high hills will come into striking juxtaposition with the rest of the open landscape. The ancient Chacoans noted this and built many great houses atop these striking features. The visual importance of place has been the subject of many research questions posed by archaeologists. However, what part sound played in the positioning of these great houses was yet to be discovered.
The Chacoans heard many sounds daily, from human voices and animal grunts to the whistling of the wind and the babbling waters of the brook. Instruments were as important then as they are today. The descendant communities of the Chacoan use copper bells, plank drums, kiva bells, tinklers, rasps, flutes, whistles, and conch-shell trumpets.
We are interested in the conch-shell trumpets. These conch shells were exotic goods sourced over 1000 km southwest of the Pacific Ocean. They were hard to acquire. However, once within the Chaco Canyon communities, they may have been used for special ceremonies, just as they are used by the Zuni and Hopi for ritual purposes today.
Van Dyke and colleagues procured a conch shell to use in experiments at Chaco sites. After removing the pointed end of the shell, the conch-shell trumpet produced a dramatic loud blast. This blast could be heard from around ~0.88 miles (~1.418km).
But why have such a loud and far-reaching instrument? Could it be related to the structure of the community itself?
In 2021, preliminary results for soundscape models were published for two Chacoan sites; three more communities were added to the research for the study published in Antiquity. The goal was simple: to determine if the surrounding habitation sites of these communities fell within the sound range of the conch shell.
The Results
The results were remarkable, indicating that most of the surrounding habitation sites fell within the range of the conch-shell trumpets if these trumpets were blown from atop the great houses. The findings also indicated that the later communities founded during the Chacoan expansion period (the mid-1000s to 1100s) were more likely to exhibit settlement locations that fell within the audible range of the conch shell compared to earlier communities. This shows that settlement formality increased with time as the Chacoan communities grew.
The conch shell trumpets may have been the ideal instrument for communicating with the surrounding community. The great houses could have sent messengers and communicated information by word of mouth, but this ran the risk that some individuals would not get the message. The information could get muddled and confusing, and it would take much longer before everyone had been told what they needed to know.
Smoke signals may have been more effective in time, but they could be missed should someone not look in the right direction at the right time. A conch shell, however, would be heard no matter where someone was within the community.
Think of a church bell and the information it relays; it tells when mass will begin and the time of the day; they are rung to mourn the death of kings and in celebration to mark the birth of a new heir. A church bell may also be rung when the city was under attack or to celebrate religious holidays. The conch shell may have a similar purpose.
The Zuni and Hopi use the conch shell in ceremonies pertaining to war and the plumed serpent (a supernatural being said to hold immense power and be extremely dangerous). The ceremony related to the plumed serpent is also known as the Snake dance, in which Hopi men dance with live snakes in their mouths. The function, held during the rainy season (August), is filled with intense prayers and songs and can take up to three days, after which the snakes are released as messengers to the underworld with the Hopi prayers for rain.
Similarly, accounts of the use of conch shell trumpets were recorded by the Spanish, who reported that Native American Pueblo warriors blew the conch shell to coordinate their attacks. Perhaps when the conch shell was blown atop the great houses, the surrounding communities were warned of an impending attack and told to gather the warriors and flee to safety.
It cannot be said with certainty whether the surrounding communities chose to live within the range of the conch-shell blasts or whether habitation beyond the range was not permitted. It is possible both were factors. To protect the community, habitation was only allowed within a specific range. At the same time, no one wanted to live beyond the range of the conch shell blast, thus leading to more structured and spatially restricted Chacoan communities.
The study reveals how sound, specifically conch-shell trumpets, may have influenced Chacoan settlement patterns and communication methods, adding new and unexplored layers to our understanding of ancient societies' social dynamics and community organisation.
I have a conch shell lying around at home; as a child, I would try blowing into it (unsuccessfully) and imagine I was signaling the start of a battle. I do not think I would ever have made the connection or even hypothesized about the possibility that the range of sound produced by my conch shell could have influenced how settlements were built.
Do you know what information the blowing of the conch shell may have relayed? Let me know.
I would love to hear your thoughts.
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References
- Forrest, E.R. (2019). The Snake Dance of the Hopi Indians. [online] Available at: https://www.palmstrading.com/the-snake-dance-of-the-hopi-indians/.
- Seckel, S. (2022.). Returning to the historical treasure of Chaco Canyon | ASU News. [online] Available at: https://news.asu.edu/20220125-discoveries-returning-historical-treasure-chaco-canyon [Accessed 3 May 2024].
- Van Dyke, R.M., Primeau, K.E., Throgmorton, K. and Witt, D.E., 2024. Seashells and sound waves: modeling soundscapes in Chacoan great-house communities. Antiquity, pp.1–18.
- Vokes, A. (2011). Conch Shell Trumpet | Arizona State Museum. [online] Available at: https://statemuseum.arizona.edu/online-exhibit/curators-choice/conch-shell-trumpet. [Accessed 3 May 2024].
