Site · United States
Aztec Ruins
Ancestral Puebloan, 1100–1300 CE
Aztec Ruins is a planned great house of over 400 rooms on the Animas River, built about 1110–1120 as a Chacoan outlier and reoccupied in the 1200s by people using Mesa Verde-style pottery. The great kiva, reconstructed by Morris in 1934, is the only fully roofed example visitors can enter. The name is a nineteenth-century settlers' error; the site has nothing to do with the Aztecs.
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| State / province | New Mexico |
| Dates | 1100–1300 CE |
| Status | National Monument and part of the Chaco Culture UNESCO World Heritage Site |
| Managed by | National Park Service |
| Access | Open daily with a visitor center in Earl Morris's former house and a half-mile trail through the West Ruin and the reconstructed great kiva. |
| Coordinates | 36.836, -108.001 (public site) |
What was found
Earl Morris's 1916–1923 excavations for the American Museum of Natural History recovered thousands of objects, including Chaco-style black-on-white pottery, baskets, sandals, turquoise, macaw feathers and a burial with ceremonial goods, plus roof timbers that anchor the tree-ring dating.
Rules
Nothing may be collected or disturbed; the site is protected by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act (1979), the Antiquities Act (1906) and NAGPRA, and the surrounding lands are also covered by New Mexico's Cultural Properties Act. This article is for study and context only and is not a collecting locality.
Elsewhere
Cite this article
Stratum Strata. "Aztec Ruins" (Site). Stratum Strata pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-21. https://stratum.black/strata/sites/aztec-ruins. Accessed 2026-09-21.
@misc{stratum-aztec-ruins,
title = {Aztec Ruins},
author = {{Stratum Strata}},
howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/strata/sites/aztec-ruins}},
year = {2026},
note = {Site article, Stratum Strata pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-21; sources: stratum, wikidata, commons. Accessed 2026-09-21.}
} Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.