Casas Grandes, which means "Great Houses" in Spanish, is an ancient archaeological site located in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. The site was built by the Mogollon culture. Casas Grandes is named a UNESCO World Heritage Site by INAH and recognized as a "Pueblo Mágico" since 2015.

Casas Grandes is one of the largest and most complex Mogollon sites in the area. People began living there after the year 1130, and by 1350, larger buildings were turned into multi-story homes. The community was abandoned around 1450. Casas Grandes is considered one of the most important Mogollon archaeological areas in northwestern Mexico. It connects to other sites in Arizona and New Mexico, showing how far the Mogollon culture's influence reached.

The Casas Grandes complex is located in a wide, fertile valley along the Casas Grandes or San Miguel River. It is about 56 kilometers (35 miles) south of Janos and 240 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of Chihuahua, the state capital. The settlement used irrigation to grow crops.

The archaeological area is within the modern municipality of Casas Grandes. The valley and surrounding region have been home to native groups for thousands of years.

Pre-Columbian culture

From 1130 to 1300 AD, people in the area began living in small groups in this large, fertile valley. The largest known settlement from this time is now called Paquimé or Casas Grandes. It started as a group of 20 or more clusters of houses, each with a central plaza and surrounding walls. These single-story buildings made of adobe shared a unified water system. Evidence shows that Paquimé had a complex water management system, including underground drainage, reservoirs, water channels to homes, and a sewage system.

Around 1340 AD, Casas Grandes was destroyed by fire. It was later rebuilt with multi-story apartment buildings instead of the smaller homes. Casas Grandes had about 2,000 connected rooms made of adobe, I-shaped Mesoamerican ballcourts, stone platforms, effigy mounds, and a market area. About 350 smaller settlements have been found in the Casas Grandes area, some as far as 70 kilometers (43 miles) away. Archaeologists believe the area directly controlled by Casas Grandes was small, covering about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the city. The population may have been about 2,500 people in Casas Grandes, with perhaps 10,000 people living in the surrounding area.

People made crafts like copper bells, jewelry, pottery, and beads from sea shells. These items were likely traded through a wide network. Casas Grandes pottery had white or reddish surfaces with decorations in blue, red, brown, or black. In the past, it was sometimes considered better made than pottery from nearby areas. Some bowls and vessels were shaped like painted human figures. Casas Grandes pottery was traded as far north as present-day New Mexico and Arizona and across northern Mexico.

Archaeologist Stephen Lekson noted that Paquimé is aligned roughly with Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins, with only a small error in distance. Chaco reached its peak first, followed by Aztec and then Paquimé. Similarities among these sites may suggest that their leaders had ceremonial connections. Lekson proposed that leaders who left Chaco later ruled at Aztec and then Paquimé. This idea remains debated and is not widely accepted. A more accepted theory is that Paquimé’s origins are linked to the Mogollon culture.

• Ramos Polychrome olla with macaw symbols
• Woman with a bowl, Ramos effigy
• Ramos Polychrome olla with Southwestern designs

Archaeological ruins

At the time of the Spanish Conquest, the district of Casas Grandes had many artificial mounds. From these mounds, looters took many stone axes, metates (used for grinding corn), and earthenware pottery vessels of different kinds.

Before major archaeological studies, large parts of buildings from pre-Columbian times still stood about 800 meters from the modern community. The ruins were made of sun-dried blocks of mud and gravel, about 56 centimeters (22 inches) thick, and of irregular length, usually about 1 meter (3 feet). These blocks were likely formed and dried in place. The thick walls were probably plastered both inside and outside. A main structure measured 240 meters (800 feet) from north to south and 76 meters (250 feet) from east to west. It was generally rectangular and appeared to consist of three separate units connected by galleries or smaller buildings.

The eastern and western parts of the city were divided by a stone wall and reservoirs. The monuments on the east were rectilinear, puddled adobe structures used mainly for homes and manufacturing. The buildings on the west were open earth mounds lined with stone, used for public displays. This layout suggests the eastern side was connected to the Puebloan peoples of North America, while the western side linked to cultures in Mesoamerica. This pattern is also seen in other sites along the same line, indicating they were built by the same group.

Homes at Paquimé were circular or semi-circular pit houses and coursed-adobe room blocks built around plazas. Living spaces varied in size from small, closet-like rooms to large courtyards. Walls at many corners stood 12 to 15 meters (40 to 50 feet) high, suggesting the original buildings may have been up to six or seven stories tall. Ruins about 140 meters (450 feet) from the main area included a series of rooms arranged around a square court, with seven rooms on each side and larger rooms at each corner.

The settlement had T-shaped doorways and stone disks at the bottom of ceiling support columns, features typical of Puebloan architecture. Casas Grandes had ballcourts, but they were smaller than those at other major sites. The ballcourts at Paquimé had the classic "I" shape found in Mesoamerica, unlike the oval-shaped ones associated with the Hohokam culture in Arizona.

A 2,300-kilogram (5,000-pound) 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 uncovered eggshell fragments, bird bones, and signs of wooden perches. A row of macaw pens was also found at the site’s center. Archaeologists concluded that the community brought scarlet macaws from Mesoamerica and raised them, as their feathers were considered sacred in Mesoamerican rituals.

A major collection of Casas Grandes pottery is held by the Museum of Peoples and Cultures at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Stanford University in California also has pottery artifacts from the site. In 1979, the British Museum acquired 23 pottery vessels from the site. A new permanent exhibit, Without Borders: The Deep History of Paquimé, recently opened at the Amerind Museum. The rest of the artifacts from Paquimé are cared for by INAH in Casas Grandes and Chihuahua City, Chihuahua.

The ruins of Casas Grandes are similar to nearby ruins in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. These sites are thought to represent cultural groups connected to the Mogollon culture. In 1874, early ethnologist Hubert Howe Bancroft claimed these groups were related to the modern-day Hopi people, then called "Moqui." However, modern scholars have not yet identified the direct descendants of the Casas Grandes people.

Iconography

Iconography refers to pictures or symbols that represent a subject, especially religious or legendary topics. At the Casas Grandes ruins, iconography has helped scientists learn about differences between men and women in ancient society, including how they traded, worked, and participated in religious activities. Small statues, called effigies, were discovered during excavations. These effigies show clear differences between males and females. Similar features, such as body positions, body shapes, activities, and facial decorations, help archaeologists understand how gender was shown in this society. Artisans at Casas Grandes created images that included rules about social behavior, like sitting positions, religious practices, such as smoking, and symbols of the supernatural, like horned or plumed serpents. Studies of these effigies suggest that both men and women had valued roles in society, and differences in how people were treated were more related to their social class than their gender. Male figures in the effigies often sat with their legs bent, had symbols like pound signs and horned serpents on their bodies, smoked, and showed their penis. Female figures typically had larger midsections, sat with their legs stretched out, had symbols like modified pound signs and birds on their bodies, held children and pots, and sometimes appeared to be nursing. These effigies show how the people of Casas Grandes believed society should be organized based on gender and provide information about everyday life.

Birth and death of Casas Grandes

Various theories exist about who lived in Casas Grandes. The most logical connection between Casas Grandes and Forty Houses, 97 kilometers (60 miles) to the south, and TJ Ruins and Gila Cliff, 320 kilometers (200 miles) to the north, led to the common agreement that the site is part of the Mogollon culture’s area of influence.

Three other theories explain the site’s existence. Archaeologist Charles C. Di Peso suggested that Casas Grandes was a minor settlement until about 1200 CE, when traders from the Aztec empire or other Mesoamerican states to the south made it a major trading center. Another theory claims that Casas Grandes was founded by elites from the Ancestral Puebloans in the north, who left places like Chaco Canyon during their decline. A third theory states that Casas Grandes was a local community that grew over time and adopted some religious and social customs from Mesoamerican civilizations. Scholars agree that trade occurred between Mesoamerican, Aridoamerican, and Southwest cultures, though not on a large or planned scale. Since no system like the pochteca existed in the north, architectural remains across the region show shared knowledge, including from places like Snaketown.

Casas Grandes was abandoned around 1450. It is unclear whether this happened slowly or quickly. Spanish explorer Francisco de Ibarra discovered the site in 1565. Nearby non-farming nomadic groups, likely the Suma or Jano, told him that a war with the Opata, a people living four days’ journey west, caused the abandonment. The inhabitants may have moved six days’ journey north, joining the Pueblos on the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

Other theories suggest the people of Casas Grandes moved west to Sonora and became the Opata, whom Spanish explorers found in the mid-16th century living in small, organized city-states. It is also possible that Casas Grandes was abandoned because better opportunities existed elsewhere. Other Southwest communities are known to have been left in favor of new homes.

The language spoken by Casas Grandes’ inhabitants is unknown. Because of Mesoamerican influence, Nahuatl was likely widely used, but it was not the main language of the people.