Anna Sofaer rediscovered the astonishing “Sun Dagger” solstice site at Chaco Canyon in 1977, which inspired her groundbreaking new book Chaco Astronomy: An Ancient American Cosmology.
While working on a field project atop Fajada Butte in Chaco Culture National Historical Park in midsummer of 1977, Sofaer witnessed a remarkable phenomenon: a single shaft of light perfectly bisecting a spiral petroglyph carved there centuries ago by the ancestors of today’s Pueblo people. Recognizing the significance of this “Sun Dagger,” began for Sofaer a three-decade odyssey of intense investigation to recover the astronomical expressions throughout the architecture and rock art of the Chaco culture.
The site itself came to be called “An American Stonehenge,” but this was only the first phase of findings by Sofaer and her colleagues, which soon revealed a regional pattern of sun and moon alignments among Chaco’s twelve major buildings and a cosmological purpose in the construction of the Chacoans’ Great North Road. The Chaco people, who left no written record, nonetheless conveyed an awe inspiring cosmology inscribed in intricate light markings and in the walls of their massive buildings and elaborately engineered roads. In his foreword to Chaco Astronomy, Hopi geodesist Phillip Tuwaletstiwa maintains that the Solstice Project’s research has revolutionized perceptions of southwestern cultural history.
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