Archaeological Treasures

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde Cultural Park. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

The discovery of abandoned Anasazi dwellings by Richard and Al Wetherill and their brother-in-law Charles Mason on a cold December day in 1888 essentially began the history of archaeology in the American West. The grandeur and mystery of this ancient city built into a canyon wall, which they called Cliff Palace, brought professional archaeologists from all over the world to the region. Pouring over the sparsely populated Colorado Plateau, they uncovered one of the richest archaeological records on earth. There were literally thousands of largely intact prehistoric stone structures, including granaries, pithouses, cliffhouses, kivas, and watchtowers. The site density in parts of southeastern Utah is as high as 80 per square mile. In San Juan County alone, there are 15,000 known archaeological sites, an estimated 10 percent of the total number.

The Anasazi left behind a large quantity of physical evidence concerning their way of life, their beliefs, and their use of the land. In the Pecos Classification system, they are termed the Basketmakers for the exceptionally beautiful plant fiber baskets that they used to carry and store items of daily life. By about 500 A.D. they began to distinguish themselves from their Archaic predecessors by their tendency to settle down and become full-time farmers. Corn, beans, and squash provided a substantial portion of the Anasazi diet. They began to construct pithouses, durable structures which served to shelter them from the elements and to provide safe, dry places to store food.

Between 700 and 900 A.D. the partially sunken pithouses were replaced by surface dwellings in most parts of the Anasazi homeland (Pueblo I in the Pecos system). The change probably came with an ever greater dependence on agriculture resulting in the need to store food for longer periods. Above-ground storage was less susceptible to water seepage and rodents, and aboveground pueblos followed. The pueblos required a greater use of natural materials than did the pithouses, including water, poles and branches for mud (jacal) construction, stone with adobe mortar for masonry, and roofs of vigas, the Spanish word for log beams commonly applied throughout the Southwest.

The greater dependence on agriculture did not mean the abandonment of the hunt. Animals clearly dominated the fall and winter rituals, and the relative abundance of deer remains in ancient Anasazi archaeological sites speak to their importance. Birds were highly significant in prehistoric as well as modern Pueblo culture. The eagle is an honored kinsman and the hunter god of the upper regions. The bones of both raptors and game birds have been found in Anasazi sites, along with those of turkeys. Turkeys had apparently been domesticated by the Anasazi.

Like their Archaic predecessors and like their Hopi descendents, the Anasazi adapted to their difficult environment by tracking the course of the seasons and learning how to effectively use natural resources. For most of their long history on the Colorado Plateau, Pueblo peoples have survived in apparent harmony with the land. Ultimately some combination of climatic change, overpopulation, and perhaps a social or religious crisis led the Anasazi to abandon their spectacular cities in the cliffs at the close of the thirteenth century.

Follow these links to:
Prehistoric Farmers
Population change
Paleoenvironment
The Anasazi "collapse"
Archaeoastronomy

The Spread of Maize to the Colorado Plateau. Migration theories have become an essential part of our understanding of Anasazi origins. The convergence of archaeological research on the Colorado Plateau and elsewhere in the Greater Southwest demonstrates that the traditional view of Anasazi development as essentially independent of Mexico is clearly no longer viable. A synopsis of current research by R.G. Matson.

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Gumerman, G. J. 1988. The Anasazi in a Changing Environment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

Gumerman, G. J., and J. S. Dean. 1989. Prehistoric Cooperation and Competition in the western Anasazi Area. Pages 99-137 in L. S. Cordell and G. J. Gumerman, eds. Dynamics of Southwest Prehistory. Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.

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Matson, R. G. 1991. The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Matson, R. G. 1994. Anomalous Basketmaker II Sites on Cedar Mesa: Not so Anomalous After All. Kiva 60: 219.

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Petersen, K. L. 1988. Climate and the Dolores River Anasazi: A Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction from a 10,000-Year Pollen Record, LA Plata Mountains, Southwestern Colorado. University of Utah Press.

Plog, S., and S. Powell. 1976-1984. Patterns of cultural change: Alternative interpretations. Pages 209-236 in S. Plog and S. Powell, eds. Papers on the archaeology of Black Mesa, Arizona. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville.

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Smiley, F. E. 1998. Archaeological chronometry : radiocarbon and tree--ring models and applications from Black Mesa, Arizona. Pages 309. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Carbondale, IL.

Vivian, R. G. 1990. The Chacoan Prehistory of the San Juan Basin. Academic Press, San Diego, CA.

Wills, W. H. 1988. Early Prehistoric Agriculture in the American Southwest. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.