Upper Kin Klizhin, Kin Klizhin Wash, Crownpoint, McKinley County, NM

Significance: The upper Kin Klizhin community centers on a rectangular sandstone structure associated with the Anasazi culture which flourished one thousand years ago in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. The people who constructed this structure were part of a complex cultural system that integrated smaller remote "outlying" farming communities such as Upper Kin Klizhin with a concentration of larger pueblos in Chaco Canyon. Features associated with the large public structures in the canyon and in the outlying communities are distinctive core and veneer masonry walls, blocked-in kivas, great kivas, road segments, earth works such as berms and mounds, and smaller house sites. Public structures such as Upper Kin Klizhin integrated the community on both social and religious levels while the great structures at Chaco Canyon integrated much of the Four Corners region. It is believed that large pilgrimages to Chaco Canyon from the outlying communities were made for social and religious events. By 1100 A.D. the center of the Anasazi culture dispersed and shifted north to the San Juan, Animas, and La Plata Rivers, and most of the sites, including Upper Kin Klizhin were abandoned. An analysis of the remaining core-and-veneer walls and adjacent masonry rubble at Upper Kin Klizhin suggests that the original structure was three stories in height, contained 20 rooms, and included a tower kiva. Upper Kin Klizhin was strategically located as the first Chacoan structure on a major road leading south from Chaco Canyon. Archeologists have speculated that the structure served as a way-station along this road as well as providing a social and religious center for a nearby cluster of small Anasazi house sites. Late Pueblo II - early Pueblo III ceramic fragments indicate that the site was occupied between 1000-1100 A.D.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N576
Survey number: HABS NM-181