The Hisatsinom Chapter of the Colorado Archaeological Society will share a presentation about Chaco Great Houses in the Great Sage Plain of Southwestern Colorado at the First United Methodist Church in Cortez on Tuesday, Sept. 5 at 7 p.m.
Mark Varien will explain the architectural subtleties of Southwest Colorado’s Chacoan regional system by centering on Chaco-style great houses and associated features that are found in the Great Sage Plain.
The church is at 515 N. Park St. in Cortez.
The Community Center Reassessment Project continues the fieldwork and data collection on the Chacoan sites that began in the late 1980s.
According to a news release, Varien will show the inventory that includes all the known great houses and talk about their chronological development, size and construction and discuss the groups of great houses in distinct clusters. He will also explore their association with other types of public architecture and connect the sites with Chaco Canyon and Aztec sites.
Varien retired from the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in December. Throughout his career he worked with the Dolores Archaeological Program, where he conducted excavations and wrote reports about the Dolores River Valley sites before McPhee Reservoir was constructed. He also has worked globally, including Guatemala, New Zealand, Australia and throughout the United States.
