NPS REPORT: KEET SEEL FRACTAL PROJECT-- 2013 In May 2013, with the cooperation of the National Park Service (NPS) at Navajo National Monument, the NPS sponsored Tribal Historic Preservation Office and the support of the Hopi Tribe, I was granted a special use permit to measure two pueblo architectures in Tsegi Canyon, Arizona. The project was overseen by park archaeologists Lloyd Masayumptewa and Matt Marques whose assistance during and after the trip was greatly appreciated. Commonly referred to by its Dine (Navajo) name as Keet Seel (various spellings), the Hopi people—who settled the land hundreds of years before the Dine arrived1—claim ancestral connections to this pueblo which they call Kawestima. Hopi consider the many sites in both Chaco and Tsegi Canyon to be itaakuku (the footprints of their ancestors2). Traditional Hopi clan history teaches that the Fire and Coyote Clans of the ancient Hopi Hisatsinom emigrated over many years from Chaco and Tsegi Canyon eventually occupying the Hopi mesas in Arizona and did so in accordance with a sacred covenant3 directing them to find Tuuwanasavi (earth center). Archaeological sites such as Kawestima are revered by Hopi as a sacred space which embraces petroglyphs, ceramic scatters, a regional sense of place and, importantly architecture. These elements create a symbolic resonance for Hopi combining the Chacoan and Tsegi phase past with the Hopi experience of the present. As symbolic architecture combined with emigration through a temporal and physical past, the landscape and the people became connected by a deeply-rooted social memory. Prior to this project, the most recent fractal architecture confirmed by the fractal model was Tsin Kletzin in Chaco Canyon (~AD1115); the critical confirmation of fractal architecture at Kawestima (c. AD1258) extends the intellectual inheritance of prehistoric Chacoan science in the southwest by over 100 years. While no one argues the ancestral connections between Hopi and Kawestima, the fractal geometry of L33 and L92 now inextricably ties Hopi architecture to Chacoan engineering practices and mathematics. I believe the geometry of L33/L92 now confirms in mathematical terms not only the Hopi claim to this land as an ancestral footprint but effectively broadens our collective knowledge of Chacoan engineering, deepens our awareness of prehistoric Native American science in general and enhances understanding of Hopi ancestral traditions in particular. Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support of Lloyd Masayumptewa, Chief of Cultural Resources, Navajo and Canyon de Chelly National Monuments for his assistance in navigating the park service special permit application process. A note of thanks is also due to Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, Director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office in Kykotsmovi, AZ for his generous support of this important project. Finally, this project would simply not have happened without the help and inspirational encouragement of Steve Hayden to whom I owe the first inkling of a fractal presence in architecture at Kawestima.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 21:19:19 +0000
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