Case study - Chacoan Towers (US Southwest)

Gillings & Wheatley (2020)

• Researchers studied tower kiva structures (multi-storey circular buildings) in the Puebloan Southwest to study whether they were:

a. Signalling stations

b. Defensive lookouts

c. Status symbols

Signalling hypothesis

• Viewsheds showed no direct inter-visibility or overlapping zones between the two Kivas studied,

Defensive lookouts

• A sensitivity analysis showed that beyond 7–9km, additional height gave negligible extra visibility,

Status symbol

• The towers increased the number of nearby sites able to see the great house complex

• Supported an interpretation of the towers as monuments designed to enhance the social and political prominence of the complex 

Central argument

•  GIS visibility analyses are best understood as generating probabilistic models and hypotheses, not definitive reconstructions of what past people saw

• Results should be combined with field verification