page_title: Casas Grandes
section_title: Archaeological ruins
hierarchical_section_title: Casas Grandes / Archaeological ruins
caption_attribution_description: English: Macaw Pens at Paquimé
context_page_description: Casas Grandes is a prehistoric archaeological site in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Construction of the site is attributed to the Mogollon culture. Casas Grandes has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is under the purview of INAH.
  Casas Grandes is one of the largest and most complex Mogollon culture sites in the region. Settlement began after 1130 AD, and the larger buildings developed into multi-storied dwellings after 1350 AD. The community was abandoned approximately 1450 AD. Casas Grandes is regarded as one of the most significant Mogollon archaeological zones in the northwestern Mexico region, linking it to other sites in Arizona and New Mexico in the United States, and exhibiting the expanse of the Mogollon sphere of influence.
  Casas Grandes complex is located in a wide, fertile valley on the Casas Grandes or San Miguel River, 35 miles south of Janos and 150 miles northwest of the state capital, the city of Chihuahua. The settlement relied on irrigation to support its agriculture.
  The archaeological zone is contained within the eponymous modern municipio of Casas Grandes.
context_section_description: At the time of the Spanish Conquest, the district of Casas Grandes was studded with artificial mounds, from which looters took numerous stone axes, metates or corn-grinders, and earthenware pottery vessels of various kinds.
  Before significant archaeological investigation, sizable portions of buildings from pre-Columbian times were extant about half a mile from the modern community.  The ruins were built of sun-dried blocks of mud and gravel, about 22 inches (56 cm) thick, and of irregular length, generally about 3 feet (0.91 m), probably formed and dried in place. The thick walls seem to have been plastered both inside and outside. A principal structure extended 800 feet (240 m) from north to south, and 250 feet (76 m) east to west.  It was generally rectangular, and appears to have consisted of three separate units joined by galleries or lines of lower buildings.
  The eastern and western halves of the city are divided by a stone wall and reservoirs. The monuments on the east are rectilinear, puddled adobe structures used primarily for domestic and manufacturing purposes. The buildings on the west, on the other hand, are open earth mounds lined in stone for public displays. This visual structure defines the eastern side as lending toward the Puebloan peoples of North America and the west as referencing the cultures to the south in Mesoamerica. This visual motif is prevalent throughout the other sites sharing the same longitudinal line, indicating that they were built by a common group.
  The homes at Paquimé were circular and semi-circular pit houses and coursed-adobe room blocks built around plazas.  The living spaces varied in size from closet-sized to extensive courtyards. Walls at many of the angles stand 40 to 50 feet (12 to 15 m) high, and indicate an original elevation of up to six or seven stories.  Ruins about 450 feet (140 m) from the main grouping consist of a series of rooms ranged round a square court, seven rooms to each side with a larger apartment at each corner.
  The settlement featured T-shaped doorways and stone disks at the bottom of ceiling support columns, both distinctive of Puebloan architecture. Casas Grandes had ballcourts, though they were relatively small compared to other major sites. The ballcourts at Paquime are in the classic "I" shape of those found Mesoamerica, and not the oval-shaped ones found in association with the Hohokam culture in south and central Arizona.
  A 5,000-pound (2,300 kg) iron meteorite was found in one of the rooms, carefully wrapped in linen. The meteorite is displayed in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
  Excavations in one compound produced eggshell fragments, bird skeletons, and traces of wooden perches. Additionally, there is the presence of a row of macaw pens in the center of the site. Archaeologists concluded that the community had imported an initial population of scarlet macaws from Mesoamerica and raised them as their feathers were considered sacred and important in Mesoamerican rituals.
  A major collection of Casas Grandes pottery is currently held by the Museum of Peoples and Cultures at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Stanford University in California also holds pottery artifacts from here. A new permanent exhibit, Without Borders: The Deep History of Paquimé, has also recently opened at the Amerind Museum.  The remainder of the material culture recovered from Paquime is located in the care of INAH in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua and Chihuahua City, Chihuahua.
  Casas Grandes' ruins are similar to neighboring ruins near Gila and Salinas in New Mexico, as well as Arizona and Colorado.  It is reasoned they represent cultural groups related and linked to the Mogollon culture. Early ethnologist Hubert Howe Bancroft, in his The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America (1874), had alleged that they are related to the modern-day Hopi People, referred as "Moqui" during his period.  Contemporary scholars have not precisely identified the descendants of the Casas Grandes people.
caption: Macaw Pens at Paquimé
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