John Roney (1992) has recently proposed that Chacoan roads functioned to integrate local Anasazi populations over small areas. This model is based on the scarcity of road segments longer than a kilometer or two, as well as on the fact that a Great House or Great Kiva is found at one end of virtually every road segment associated with the Chaco Anasazi. According to Roney (1992:129), this pattern suggests that roads must have served functions similar to these specialized architectural features. By assuming that Great Houses served to integrate local communities, Roney hypothesizes that the roads functioned to direct attention, both symbolically and physically, towards this integrative architecture (Roney 1992:130). In essence, this view sees roads as drawing people from surrounding areas and funneling them towards a particular Great House.

This model receives considerable support from the road segments found in the study area. The majority of roads seem to fit both cost-paths and often direct lines between Great Houses and habitation clusters. In communities such as Coolidge and Blue J, the segments do not extend beyond community boundaries, but instead physically link Great Houses with adjacent areas of relatively dense occupation. In other communities, however, the roads extend beyond the communities to small hamlets located nearby. For example, a road segment in Andrews (Figure 5) corresponds with the cost-path between the community's Great House and a separate cluster of habitations. In a few cases, however, the fit is only suggestive, such as the seemingly isolated road segment in Tse Bee Kintsoh that may or may not have connected one of the Great Houses with a nearby habitation cluster (Figure 6).

Although the pattern of short road segments emanating from Great Houses and terminating in nearby habitation clusters is common in the study area, what this actually signifies is not as clear. In general, scholars investigating the Chaco Anasazi have seen Great Houses and associated architecture as serving to integrate communities, and if true, the roads likely served a similar function as Roney suggests. However, a smaller body of research (Kantner 1996; Sebastian 1992) suggests that Great Houses may have also been arenas of political competition, with local political entrepreneurs maintaining the specialized architecture to impress followers and to upstage potential competitors. From this perspective, short road segments may have been designed not so much to integrate local populations, but rather to augment the influence and prestige of local political leaders. Determining road function in these cases will require archaeological research focused on the role of Great Houses and Great Kivas in Anasazi communities.