Foot Notes: The Social Implications of Polydactyly and Foot-Related Imagery at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon

Abstract

Discussions of polydactyly in the U.S. Southwest describe rock art and skeletal material confirming the presence of six-toed individuals at a variety of sites and in a variety of time periods. A review of Pueblo Bonito collections and archives reveals both skeletal and footprint evidence for six-toed individuals and a large and diverse assemblage of cultural material exhibiting foot-related imagery, including ornaments, sandals, ceramic effigies, and sandal-shaped ground stone. The reiterative nature of these foot-related images, reproduced in a wide range of media, and their frequent associations with highly structured and ritualized contexts, indicates that both five- and six-toed feet had symbolic importance. The evidence also suggests six-toed individuals were accorded special status within Chacoan society.

Great House origins and population stability at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: The isotopic evidence

“…First, the most significant outlier is a female (NMNH catalog no. 327071 (labeled -71‖ on the PCA plot) referred to by Judd (1954) Crown et al 2016) and H/3672 who were born in the canyon based on our isotopic analyses, both had occipital deformation. However, the remaining individuals in the room for whom we have information all had lambdoidal deformation (Marden 2012: 419, citing T. Dale Stewart).…”

What’s new in Chaco research?

“…Crown et al . (2016) suggest that this was regarded as a sign of status. They document several cases of polydactylism among individuals in the Chaco World, depicted in rock art, painted on pottery and shaped into stone and ceramic objects.…”

Sandals as Icons: Representations in Ancestral Pueblo Rock Art and Effigies in Stone and Wood

“…Certainly the rock art does not support this notion, and more data are needed to deal with this issue. Recently Crown et al [45] (p. 445) assert that the jog-toed sandal itself evolved as an accommodation to polydactyly in the form of six toes, a trait characteristic of an early elite burial, although no sandal was found in association. The burial in question (Burial 13 in Room33 in Pueblo Bonito) was recently radio-carbon dated between A. D. 690-877, with a median date of A.D. 781 [46] (p. 19623), dates that precede in time the iconography under discussion.…”

“…Nevertheless, a synthesis of foot imagery at Chaco [45] emphasizes the symbolic role of the foot in Ancestral Pueblo ideology during these years, accounting for its presence in the rock art. The symbolic importance of the sandal as a graphic image is also underscored by its replication in other media found within archaeological contexts that indicate it had a ceremonial role.…”