As early as the twelfth century A.D., the settlements of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico in the American Southwest were notable for their “great houses,” massive stone buildings that contain hundreds of rooms and often stand three or four stories high. Arc

Essay topics:

As early as the twelfth century A.D., the settlements of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico in the American Southwest were notable for their “great houses,” massive stone buildings that contain hundreds of rooms and often stand three or four stories high. Archaeologists have been trying to determine how the buildings were used. While there is still no universally agreed upon explanation, there are three competing theories.

One theory holds that the Chaco structures were purely residential, with each housing hundreds of people. Supporters of this theory have interpreted Chaco great houses as earlier versions of the architecture seen in more recent Southwest societies. In particular, the Chaco houses appear strikingly similar to the large, well-known “apartment buildings” at Taos, New Mexico, in which many people have been living for centuries.

A second theory contends that the Chaco structures were used to store food supplies. One of the main crops of the Chaco people was grain maize, which could be stored for long periods of time without spoiling and could serve as a long-lasting supply of food. The supplies of maize had to be stored somewhere, and the size of the great houses would make them very suitable for the purpose.

A third theory proposes that houses were used as ceremonial centers. Close to one house, called Pueblo Alto, archaeologists identified an enormous mound formed by a pile of old material. Excavations of the mound revealed deposits containing a surprisingly large number of broken pots. This finding has been interpreted as evidence that people gathered at Pueblo Alto for special ceremonies. At the ceremonies, they ate festive meals and then discarded the pots in which the meals had been prepared or served. Such ceremonies have been documented for other Native American cultures.

The article explains how archaeologists have be trying to determine the "great houses" in Chaco Canyon was used and provides three different explainations for the same. However, the professor refutes each of this explainations.

First, The reading claimes that the Chaco structures were purely residential. The professor refutes this point by saying that from the outside the building looked like an apatment building but from inside they did not have enough facilities for residential living. For that he gives example of fire places for cooking. The building had only 10 fire places to cook while it had capacity of occupying 100 families. Thus, he disaproves that the building were purly residential buildings.

Second, The article posits that the Chaco structures were used to store crops such as maize. However, The professor says that If they were used as storage for crops, there should be some signs of spilled maize on the floor or there should be large containers to store the large ampunt of crops. There was no evindence of large containers or mainze on the floor in the buildings or large storage containers. Hence, He says that the buildings were not used to store food supplies.

Third, The reading says that the houses were used as ceremonial centers. The professor opposes this point be explaining that materials found after the excavations of the mound consisted not only broken pots but also other materials such as building construction materials like sand, equipments and trashes of constructions. The pots found can also be the trases of workers meals. Because of these reasons it can not be proved that the houses were used as ceremonial centers.

Hence, The article provides different ways of usage of the buildings and professor disaproves them by providing exact examples.

Votes
Average: 0.3 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 68, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...chaeologists have be trying to determine the 'great houses' in Chaco Ca...
^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, hence, however, if, look, second, so, third, thus, while, such as

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 10.4613686534 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 5.04856512141 79% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 7.30242825607 110% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 12.0772626932 83% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 22.412803532 98% => OK
Preposition: 30.0 30.3222958057 99% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 5.01324503311 60% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1528.0 1373.03311258 111% => OK
No of words: 293.0 270.72406181 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.21501706485 5.08290768461 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.13729897018 4.04702891845 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.72734900531 2.5805825403 106% => OK
Unique words: 145.0 145.348785872 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.494880546075 0.540411800872 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 460.8 419.366225166 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 3.25607064018 61% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.23620309051 134% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 1.25165562914 80% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 2.5761589404 78% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 13.0662251656 122% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 21.2450331126 85% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 58.1344078408 49.2860985944 118% => OK
Chars per sentence: 95.5 110.228320801 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.3125 21.698381199 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.1875 7.06452816374 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.09492273731 122% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 4.19205298013 24% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 4.33554083885 46% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 4.45695364238 67% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 11.0 4.27373068433 257% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0231399565402 0.272083759551 9% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0123349522475 0.0996497079465 12% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0326352160807 0.0662205650399 49% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0115696427651 0.162205337803 7% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.014176034059 0.0443174109184 32% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.3 13.3589403974 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 53.8541721854 99% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 11.0289183223 93% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.2367328918 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.92 8.42419426049 94% => OK
difficult_words: 63.0 63.6247240618 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 10.7273730684 79% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 10.498013245 88% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.2008830022 116% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.

Rates: 3.33333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.