Aztec, at the height of the Chacoan occupation, must have been a fascinating sight. On a sunny summer day, the plaza and rooftops would have been a busy swarm of activity—mothers nursing and tending their young, grinding corn for tortillas, preparing meat for the stew pot, making baskets, and molding clay pots for later firing. Old men basked in the sun or instructed the young boys. Most of the men and older boys were busy tending the corn, beans, and squash in the fertile fields surrounding the pueblo. This was exacting work, since each plot, clan by clan, had to receive its carefully husbanded share of water from the irrigation ditch that ran along the slope of the high terrace just to the north of the pueblo. At times during the day, hunters would straggle in happily if burdened with game, sadly and slowly if empty-handed after a fruitless chase. Occasionally a wandering group of strangers would pass by with items to trade. They were made welcome and fed, and the whole plaza took on a festive air. At night the pueblo must have presented a vastly different appearance: dark, mysterious, and quiet. Here and there a small dying fire cast a flickering glow upon a brown adobe wall. In one or two of the kivas, a faint light through the hatchway in the roof indicated preparations under way for a ceremony, or perhaps a special highly secret meeting of one of the clan societies. If you looked closely you might make out one of the sentinels, silhouetted briefly against the night sky as he shifted position. But the pueblo was silent—a silence only broken by an occasional dog’s bark or baby’s wail—until, shortly after the morning star appeared, the hunters crept quietly out of the pueblo, and as the star faded, the broadening morning light heralded the approach of another day in the life of Aztec pueblo. But something happened. For no reason we can ascertain today, the pueblo was abandoned by its first occupants. Presumably, this was a fairly fast exodus, but one in which the people had time to take most of their treasured possessions with them. There is no evidence that they were driven away by invaders, or by any other major catastrophe such as fire, flood, or pestilence. We do not know if they left en masse or perhaps more gradually, as they arrived, in clans and groups. If a few hardy souls stayed behind, or if a few weak stragglers couldn’t make the trip, there is no evidence. All we know is that by about A.D. 1125, or perhaps 1130, the pueblo was empty. For almost a hundred years the great structure stood alone, untended and uninhabited. Perhaps the local people occasionally used a loosening beam from the structure, or gathered up a few blocks from the slowly crumbling walls, or helped themselves to any readily useful articles left behind, but otherwise they and any passing wanderers seem to have left the place alone.