Ancestral Puebloans
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day
The Ancestral Puebloans lived in a range of structures that included small family
Etymology
Pueblo,
Geography
The Ancestral Puebloans were one of four major prehistoric archaeological traditions recognized in the American Southwest, also known as Oasisamerica. The others are the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Patayan. In relation to neighboring cultures, the Ancestral Puebloans occupied the northeast quadrant of the area.[7] The Ancestral Puebloan homeland centers on the Colorado Plateau, but extends from central New Mexico on the east to southern Nevada on the west.
Areas of southern Nevada, Utah, and Colorado form a loose northern boundary, while the southern edge is defined by the
All areas of the Ancestral Puebloan homeland suffered from periods of drought and erosion from wind and water. Summer rains could be unreliable and produced destructive thunderstorms. While the amount of winter snowfall varied greatly, the Ancestral Puebloans depended on the snow for most of their water. Snow melt allowed the germination of seeds, both wild and cultivated, in the spring.
Where sandstone layers overlay shale, snow melt could accumulate and create seeps and springs, which the Ancestral Puebloans used as water sources. Snow also fed the smaller, more predictable tributaries, such as the Chinle, Animas, Jemez, and Taos Rivers. The larger rivers were less directly important to the ancient culture, as smaller streams were more easily diverted or controlled for irrigation.
Cultural characteristics
The Ancestral Puebloan culture is perhaps best known for the stone and earth dwellings its people built along cliff walls, particularly during the
These villages, called
Ancestral Puebloans are also known for their pottery. Local plainware pottery used for cooking or storage was unpainted gray, either smooth or textured. Pottery used for more formal purposes was often more richly adorned. In the northern portion of the Ancestral Pueblo lands, from about 500 to 1300 AD, the pottery styles commonly had black-painted designs on white or light gray backgrounds.[10] Decoration is characterized by fine hatching, and contrasting colors are produced by the use of mineral-based paint on a chalky background.[11] South of the Anasazi territory, in Mogollon settlements, pottery was more often hand-coiled, scraped, and polished, with red to brown coloring.[12]
Certain tall cylinders were likely ceremonial vessels, while narrow-necked jars, called
Changes in pottery composition, structure, and decoration are signals of social change in the archaeological record. This is particularly true as the peoples of the American Southwest began to leave their historic homes and migrate south. According to archaeologists Patricia Crown and Steadman Upham, the appearance of the bright colors on Salado Polychromes in the 14th century may reflect religious or political alliances on a regional level. Late 14th- and 15th-century pottery from central Arizona, widely traded in the region, has colors and designs which may derive from earlier ware by both Ancestral Pueblo and Mogollon peoples.[13]
The Ancestral Puebloans also excelled at
Recent archaeological evidence has established that in at least one great house, Pueblo Bonito, the elite family whose burials associate them with the site practiced matrilineal succession. Room 33 in Pueblo Bonito, the richest burial ever excavated in the Southwest, served as a crypt for one powerful lineage, traced through the female line, for approximately 330 years. While other Ancestral Pueblo burials have not yet been subjected to the same archaeogenomic testing, the survival of matrilineal descent among contemporary Pueblo peoples suggests that this may have been a widespread practice among Ancestral Puebloans.[14]
Architecture
Ancestral Pueblo people in the North American Southwest crafted a unique architecture with planned community spaces. Population centers such as
These buildings were usually multistoried and multipurposed, and surrounded by open plazas and viewsheds. Hundreds to thousands of people lived in these communities. These complexes hosted cultural and civic events and infrastructure that supported a vast outlying region hundreds of miles away linked by transportation roadways.
Built well before 1492 AD, these towns and villages were located in defensive positions, for example on high, steep mesas such as at Mesa Verde or present-day Acoma Pueblo, called the "Sky City", in New Mexico. Before 900 AD and progressing past the 13th century, the population complexes were major cultural centers. In Chaco Canyon, Chacoan developers quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling 15 major complexes. These ranked as the largest buildings in North America until the late 19th century.[15][16]
Evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the Sun Dagger petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Many Chacoan buildings may have been aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles,[17] requiring generations of astronomical observations and centuries of skillfully coordinated construction.[18] The Chacoans abandoned the canyon, probably due to climate change beginning with a 50-year drought starting in 1130.[19]
Great Houses
Ancestral Puebloan periods |
---|
Archaic–Early Basketmaker Era 7000–1500 BCE |
Early Basketmaker II Era 1500 BCE–50 CE |
Late Basketmaker II Era 50–500 |
Basketmaker III Era 500–750 |
Pueblo I Period 750–900 |
Pueblo II Period 900–1150 |
Pueblo III Period 1150–1350 |
Pueblo IV Period 1350–1600 |
Pueblo V Period 1600–present |
Immense complexes known as "great houses" embodied worship at Chaco. Archaeologists have found musical instruments, jewelry, ceramics, and ceremonial items, indicating people in the Great Houses were elite, wealthier families. They hosted indoor burials, where gifts were interred with the dead, often including bowls of food and turquoise beads.[20]
Over centuries, architectural forms evolved but the complexes kept some core traits, such as their size. They averaged more than 200 rooms each, and some had 700 rooms.[18] Rooms were very large, with higher ceilings than Ancestral Pueblo buildings of earlier periods. They were well-planned: vast sections were built in a single stage.
Most houses faced south. Plazas were almost always surrounded by buildings of sealed-off rooms or high walls. There were often four or five stories, with single-story rooms facing the plaza; room blocks were terraced to allow the tallest sections to compose the pueblo's rear edifice. Rooms were often organized into suites, with front rooms larger than rear, interior, and storage rooms or areas.
Ceremonial structures known as kivas were built in proportion to the number of rooms in a pueblo. A small kiva was built for roughly every 29 rooms. Nine complexes each had a Great Kiva, up to 63 feet (19 m) in diameter. T-shaped doorways and stone lintels marked all Chacoan kivas.
Although simple and compound walls were often used, great houses usually had core-and-veneer walls: rubble filled the gap between parallel load-bearing walls of dressed, flat sandstone blocks bound in clay mortar.[21] Walls were covered in a veneer of small sandstone pieces, which were pressed into a layer of binding mud.[21] These surfacing stones were often arranged in distinctive patterns.
The Chacoan structures together required the wood of 200,000 conifer trees, mostly hauled – on foot – from mountain ranges up to 70 miles (110 km) away.[22][23]
Ceremonial infrastructure
One of the most notable aspects of Ancestral Puebloan infrastructure is the Chaco Road at Chaco Canyon, a system of roads radiating from many great house sites such as Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, and Una Vida. They led toward small outlier sites and natural features in the canyon and outside.
Through satellite images and ground investigations, archaeologists have found eight main roads that together run for more than 180 miles (300 km), and are more than 30 feet (10 m) wide. These were built by excavating into a smooth, leveled surface in the bedrock or removing vegetation and soil. Large ramps and stairways in the cliff rock connect the roads above the canyon to sites at the bottom.
The largest roads, built at the same time as many of the great houses (1000 to 1125 AD), are: the Great North Road, the South Road, the Coyote Canyon Road, the Chacra Face Road, Ahshislepah Road, Mexican Springs Road, the West Road, and the shorter Pintado-Chaco Road. Simple structures like berms and walls are sometimes aligned along the roads. Some tracts of the roads lead to natural features such as springs, lakes, mountain tops, and pinnacles.[24]
Great North Road
The longest and best-known of these roads is the Great North Road, which originates from different routes close to Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl. These roads converge at Pueblo Alto and from there lead north beyond the canyon limits. Along roadways were only small, isolated structures. [citation needed]
Archaeological interpretations of the Chaco road system are divided between an economic purpose and a symbolic, ideological or religious role.
The system was discovered in the late 19th century and excavated in the 1970s. By the late 20th century, aerial and satellite photographs helped in the study. Archaeologists suggested that the road's main purpose was to transport local and exotic goods to and from the canyon. The economic purpose of the Chaco road system is shown by the presence of luxury items at Pueblo Bonito and elsewhere in the canyon. Items such as
Cliff communities
Throughout the southwest Ancestral Puebloan region, the inhabitants built complexes in shallow
The best-known site is at Mesa Verde, with a large number of well-preserved cliff dwellings. This area included common Pueblo architectural forms, such as kivas, towers, and pit-houses, but the space restrictions of these alcoves resulted in far denser populations. Mug House, a typical cliff dwelling of the period, was home to around 100 people who shared 94 small rooms and eight kivas, built right up against each other and sharing many walls. Builders maximized space use and no area was off-limits.[23]
Not all the people in the region lived in cliff dwellings; many colonized the canyon rims and slopes in multifamily structures that grew to unprecedented size as populations swelled.[23] Decorative motifs for these sandstone/mortar structures, both cliff dwellings and not, included T-shaped windows and doors. This has been taken by some archaeologists, such as Stephen Lekson (1999), as evidence of the continuation of the Chaco Canyon elite system, which had seemingly collapsed a century earlier.[26] Other researchers instead explain these motifs as part a wider Pueblo style or religion.[27]
History
Origins
During the period from 700 to 1130 AD (
Ancestral Puebloan culture has been divided into three main areas or branches, based on geographical location: [citation needed]
- Chaco Canyon(northwest New Mexico)
- Kayenta(northeast Arizona), and
- Northern San Juan (Mesa Verde and Hovenweep National Monument) (southwest Colorado and southeastern Utah)
Modern Pueblo oral traditions[
Migration from the homeland
The Ancestral Puebloans left their established homes in the 12th and 13th centuries. The main reason is unclear. Factors discussed include global or regional climate change, prolonged drought,
Current scholarly consensus is that Ancestral Puebloans responded to pressure from
Ancestral Puebloans attained a cultural "Golden Age" between about 900 and 1150. During this time, generally classed as Pueblo II Era, the climate was relatively warm and rainfall mostly adequate. Communities grew larger and were inhabited for longer. Highly specific local traditions in architecture and pottery emerged, and trade over long distances appears to have been common.
After around 1130, North America had significant climatic change in the form of a 300-year period of aridity called the Great Drought.
In this later period, the Pueblo II became more self-contained, decreasing trade and interaction with more distant communities. Southwest farmers developed irrigation techniques appropriate to seasonal rainfall, including soil and water control features such as check dams and terraces. The population of the region continued to be mobile, abandoning settlements and fields under adverse conditions. There was also a drop in water table due to a different cycle unrelated to rainfall. This forced the abandonment of settlements in the more arid or overfarmed locations.[33]
Evidence suggests a profound change in religion in this period. Chacoan and other structures constructed originally along astronomical alignments, and thought to have served important ceremonial purposes to the culture, were systematically dismantled. Doorways were sealed with rock and mortar. Kiva walls show marks from great fires set within them, which probably required removal of the massive roof – a task which would require significant effort. Habitations were abandoned, and tribes divided and resettled far.[citation needed]
This evidence suggests that the religious structures were abandoned deliberately over time. Pueblo oral history holds that the ancestors had achieved great spiritual power and control over natural forces. They used their power in ways that caused nature to change and caused changes that were never meant to occur. Possibly, the dismantling of their religious structures was an effort to symbolically undo the changes they believed they caused due to their abuse of their spiritual power, and thus make amends with nature.[citation needed]
Most modern Pueblo peoples (whether
Many modern Pueblo tribes trace their lineage from specific settlements. For example, the
Warfare
Environmental stress may have caused changes in social structure, leading to conflict and warfare. Near Kayenta, Arizona, Jonathan Haas of the Field Museum in Chicago has been studying a group of Ancestral Puebloan villages that relocated from the canyons to the high mesa tops during the late 13th century. Haas believes that the reason to move so far from water and arable land was a defense against enemies. He asserts that isolated communities relied on raiding for food and supplies, and that internal conflict and warfare became common in the 13th century.
This conflict may have been aggravated by the influx of less settled peoples, Numic-speakers such as the
A 1997 excavation at Cowboy Wash near Dolores, Colorado found remains of at least 24 human skeletons that showed evidence of violence and dismemberment, with strong indications of cannibalism.[34] This modest community appears to have been abandoned during the same time period.[35] Other excavations within the Ancestral Puebloan cultural area have produced varying numbers of unburied, and in some cases dismembered, bodies.[36] In a 2010 paper, Potter and Chuipka argued that evidence at Sacred Ridge site, near Durango, Colorado, is best interpreted as warfare related to competition and ethnic cleansing.[37]
This evidence of warfare, conflict, and cannibalism is hotly debated by some scholars and interest groups.[34][38][39] Suggested alternatives include: a community suffering the pressure of starvation or extreme social stress, dismemberment and cannibalism as religious ritual or in response to religious conflict, the influx of outsiders seeking to drive out a settled agricultural community via calculated atrocity, or an invasion of a settled region by nomadic raiders who practiced cannibalism.[citation needed]
Anasazi as a cultural label
The term "Anasazi" was established in archaeological terminology through the Pecos Classification system in 1927. It had been adopted from the Navajo. Archaeologist Linda Cordell discussed the word's etymology and use:
The name "Anasazi" has come to mean "ancient people," although the word itself is Navajo, meaning "enemy ancestors." [The Navajo word is anaasází (< anaa- "enemy", sází "ancestor").] It is unfortunate that a non-Pueblo word has come to stand for a tradition that is certainly ancestral Pueblo. The term was first applied to ruins of the Mesa Verde by Richard Wetherill, a rancher and trader who, in 1888–1889, was the first Anglo-American to explore the sites in that area. Wetherill knew and worked with Navajos and understood what the word meant. The name was further sanctioned in archaeology when it was adopted by Alfred V. Kidder, the acknowledged dean of Southwestern Archaeology. Kidder felt that it was less cumbersome than a more technical term he might have used. Subsequently some archaeologists who would try to change the term have worried that because the Pueblos speak different languages, there are different words for "ancestor," and using one might be offensive to people speaking other languages.[40]
Many contemporary Pueblo peoples object to the use of the term Anasazi; controversy exists among them on a native alternative. Some modern descendants of this culture often choose to use the term "Ancestral Pueblo" peoples. Contemporary Hopi use the word Hisatsinom in preference to Anasazi.[41] Others have objected to Cordell's definition of the name "Anasazi", saying that its true connotation means in the Navajo language "those that do things differently."[42]
David Roberts, in his book In Search of the Old Ones: Exploring the Anasazi World of the Southwest, explains his reason for using the term "Anasazi" over a term like "Puebloan", noting that the latter term "derives from the language of an oppressor who treated the indigenes of the Southwest far more brutally than the Navajo ever did."
Cultural distinctions
Archaeological cultural units such as Ancestral Puebloan, Hohokam, Patayan, or Mogollon are used by archaeologists to define material culture similarities and differences that may identify prehistoric sociocultural units, equivalent to modern societies or peoples. The names and divisions are classification devices based on theoretical perspectives, analytical methods, and data available at the time of analysis and publication. They are subject to change, not only on the basis of new information and discoveries, but also as attitudes and perspectives change within the scientific community. It should not be assumed that an archaeological division or culture unit corresponds to a particular language group or to a socio-political entity such as a tribe.
Current terms and conventions have significant limitations:
- Archaeological research focuses on items left behind during people's activities: fragments of pottery vessels, garbage, human remains, stone tools or evidence left from the construction of dwellings. However, many other aspects of the culture of prehistoric peoples are not tangible. Their beliefs and behavior are difficult to decipher from physical materials, and their languages remain unknown as they had no known writing system.
- Cultural divisions are tools of the modern scientist, and so should not be considered similar to divisions or relationships that the ancient residents may have recognized. Modern cultures in this region, many of whom claim some of these ancient people as ancestors, express a striking range of diversity in lifestyles, social organization, language, and religious beliefs. This suggests the ancient people were also more diverse than their material remains may suggest.
- The modern term "style" has a bearing on how material items such as pottery or architecture can be interpreted. Within a people, different means to accomplish the same goal can be adopted by subsets of the larger group. For example, in modern Western cultures, there are alternative styles of clothing that characterize older and younger generations. Some cultural differences may be based on linear traditions, on teaching from one generation or "school" to another. Other varieties in style may have distinguished between arbitrary groups within a culture, perhaps defining status, gender, clan or guild affiliation, religious belief or cultural alliances. Variations may also simply reflect the different resources available in a given time or area.
Defining cultural groups, such as the Ancestral Puebloans, tends to create an image of territories separated by clear-cut boundaries, like border boundaries separating modern states. These did not exist. Prehistoric people traded, worshipped, collaborated, and fought most often with other nearby groups. Cultural differences should therefore be understood as clinal: "increasing gradually as the distance separating groups also increases".[43]
Departures from the expected pattern may occur because of unidentified social or political situations or because of geographic barriers. In the Southwest, mountain ranges, rivers, and most obviously, the Grand Canyon, can be significant barriers for human communities, likely reducing the frequency of contact with other groups. Current opinion holds that the closer cultural similarity between the Mogollon and Ancestral Puebloans, and their greater differences from the Hohokam and Patayan, is due to both the geography and the variety of climate zones in the Southwest.
See also
- Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest
- Anasazi flute
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- Cynthia Irwin-Williams
- Dinétah
- Gallina
- Indian Mesa
- Kokopelli
- Matrilocal residence
- Poqanghoya
- Prehistoric Southwestern cultural divisions
- Virgin Anasazi
- Water glyphs
- Zuni people
References
Notes
- ^ a b c "Ancestral Pueblo culture". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 4 June 2012.
- ^ Cordell, Linda; McBrinn, Maxine (2012). Archaeology of the Southwest (3 ed.).
- ^ a b Hewit (2010-07-09). "Puebloan Culture". University of Northern Colorado. Archived from the original on 2010-07-09.
- ^ rae.es; pueblo in the Real Academia Española dictionary.
- ^ "Anasazi". U*X*L Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. U*X*L. 2008. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-09-21. Retrieved 2012-08-14.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - YouTube, 2018, minutes 2:05–ff.
- ^ The Anasazi or "Ancient Pueblo" Archived August 28, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, from CP-LUHNA, Northern Arizona University
- ISBN 1877856703.
- .
- S2CID 132078645.
- ^ a b Cordell, p. 98
- ISBN 0-89599-038-5.
- ^ Cordell, pp. 142–43.
- PMID 28221340.
- ^ Strutin 1994, p. 6
- ^ Fagan 2005, p. 35
- ^ Fagan 1998, pp. 177–182
- ^ a b Sofaer 1997
- ^ Fagan 2005, p. 198
- ISBN 0-8263-2178-X.
- ^ a b Fagan 2005, pp. 119–121
- ^ Sofaer 1999
- ^ a b c Kantner, John (2004). "Ancient Puebloan Southwest", pp. 161–166
- ^ "Chacoan Roads." National Park Service. Retrieved 4 June 2012.
- PMID 11572943.
- ^ Lekson, Stephen (1999). The Chaco Meridian: centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest. Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press
- ^ Phillips, David A., Jr., 2000, "The Chaco Meridian: A skeptical analysis", paper presented to the 65th annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology, Philadelphia.
- ^ Diamond 2005, pp. 136−156.
- ^ The first to surmise this was John W. Powell, Canyons of the Colorado, 1895, Flood & Vincent.
- PMID 20133614.
- ^ Diamond 2005, p. 152.
- ^ Peterson, Larry (6 February 2017). "Mountains of Evidence". American Scientist.
- ^ Diamond 2005, p. 153.
- ^ Steven LeBlanc (17 May 2000). Secrets of the Dead: Cannibalism in the Canyon (Motion Picture). PBS. Archivedfrom the original on 2021-11-07. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
- ^ LeBlanc p. 174
- ISBN 0-691-09467-5
- .
- ^ Alexandra Witze (1 June 2001). "Researchers Divided Over Whether Anasazi Were Cannibals". National Geographic. Archived from the original on October 25, 2001. Retrieved 22 November 2017.
- ^ Preston, Douglas (November 30, 1998). "Cannibals of the Canyon". The New Yorker.
- ^ Cordell, pp. 18–19
- ^ Pueblo culture Archived January 25, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, scroll down
- YouTube, July 18, 2023, minutes 6:00–6:27.
- ^ Plog, p. 72.
Bibliography
- Childs, Craig House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest. Little, Brown and Company, February 22, 2007. ISBN 0-316-60817-3.
- Cordell, Linda S. Ancient Pueblo Peoples. St. Remy Press and Smithsonian Institution, 1994. ISBN 0-89599-038-5.
- Diamond, Jared (2005), Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed, London: Viking Penguin, ISBN 978-0-1431-1700-1
- Fagan, Brian M. "Ancient North America: Tha Archaeology of a Continent (part five)." ISBN 0-500-05075-9.
- ISBN 0-19-517043-1
- ISBN 0-201-95991-7
- Jennings, Jesse D. Glen Canyon: An Archaeological Summary. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1966, republished 1998. ISBN 0-87480-584-8.
- LeBlanc, Steven A. "Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest." 1999, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah. ISBN 0-87480-581-3.
- ISBN 0-500-27939-X.
- Roberts, David D. In Search of the Old Ones: Exploring the Anasazi World of the Southwest. Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, 1996. ISBN 0-684-81078-6.
- Sofaer, Anna (1997), The Primary Architecture of the Chacoan Culture: A Cosmological Expression, University of New Mexico Press, archived from the original on July 23, 2009, retrieved August 21, 2009
- Sofaer, Anna (1999), The Mystery of Chaco Canyon, South Carolina Educational Television
- Great Drought. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 30, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/243212/Great-Drought
- Strutin, Michele (1994), Chaco: A Cultural Legacy, George H.H. Huey, photography, Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, ISBN 1-877856-45-2
- PMID 21149683.
External links
- Bandelier National Monument Virtual Museum Exhibit and Lesson Plans, from National Park Service
- Chaco Culture National Historic Park Virtual Museum Exhibit, from National Park Service
- People of the Colorado Plateau
- An Early Population Explosion on the Colorado Plateau
- The People of the Mountains, Mesas and Grasslands
- Cliff Palace of the Anasazi Photo
- 1054 Supernova Petrograph
- The Chaco Meridian
- Life Lists at SmithsonianMag.com: Mesa Verde
- Art by the Ancient Pueblo (Anasazi) at the Brooklyn Museum