A chocolate toast at Chaco

This is very interesting news, and underscores that high-intensity trade linked the U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica centuries ago.

Researchers have found traces of chocolate in drinking pottery at Chaco Canyon, the renowned Anasazi ruin site in New Mexico.

And, interestingly squared, the traces were found in "commoner" pottery, not just fancy stuff.

The vessels they examined came from the elite burial sites at Pueblo Bonito in roughly A.D. 900, and from the platform mound site of Los Muertos in Arizona. The latter is believed to have been the residence of elites among the Hohokam, an agricultural people, in the 14th century. They also tested eight pots from small pueblos that would have been inhabited by common folks.

Researcher Dorothy Washburn, of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, believes turquoise was the primary exchange good for the chocolate.

Washburn said there also appears to be Mesoamerican-influenced design changes.

These two things, combined with trade of macaw feathers, may give more credence to the idea that Anasazi/Puebloan Kachina religion also came from Mesoamerica.