“The 19 Pueblos of New Mexico,” Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, 2007. 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. The largest roads, constructed at the same time as many of the great house sites (between 1000 and 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. Once again, the various Pueblo groups—with their particular histories, evolving languages, and increasingly interwoven traditions—chose to leave their communities in this region and head either west and southwest or south and southeast. The sites and histories of this ancestral culture are still valued today in song and prayer by the Pueblo peoples now residing in New Mexico and Arizona. Pueblo, which means "village" in Spanish, was a term originating with the Spanish explorers who used it to refer to the people's particular style of dwelling. Most apparent is their sheer bulk; complexes averaged more than 200 rooms each, and some enclosed up to 700 rooms. 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. The Ancestral Puebloan culture is perhaps best known for the stone and earth dwellings its people built along cliff walls, particularly during the Pueblo II and Pueblo III eras, from about 900 to 1350 AD in total. 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. [32] 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. 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. Walls were then covered in a veneer of small sandstone pieces, which were pressed into a layer of binding mud. Multi-walled structures are uncommon in the western Mesa Verde region and not found in the late Pueblo villages of Hovenweep National Monument. Earlier than 900 AD and progressing past the 13th century, the population complexes were a major center of culture for the Ancestral Puebloans. At the same time, nearby areas that suffered significantly drier patterns were abandoned. Some of the earliest villages in the Ancestral Pueblo area occur in eastern and western Mesa Verde by about AD 775. This shift resulted in significant increases in both the population and size of the largest villages, as outlying populations converged in the central Mesa Verde region. It is also the only late Mesa Verde village where a portion of its layout is built in a style not commonly seen until fourteenth-century pueblos of northern New Mexico. Although many early researchers drew inspiration from the historic Pueblos in their interpretations of the architecture and practices of the Ancestral Pueblo, they did not always make a clear link between this ancient culture and historic Pueblo peoples. Called the "three sisters", these foods were essential to survival because together they provided for many of the people's nutritional needs. Areas of southern Nevada, Utah, and Colorado form a loose northern boundary, while the southern edge is defined by the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers in Arizona and the Rio Puerco and Rio Grande in New Mexico. [citation needed], Most modern Pueblo peoples (whether Keresans, Hopi, or Tanoans) assert the Ancestral Puebloans did not "vanish", as is commonly portrayed in media presentations or popular books. In marked contrast to earlier constructions and villages on top of the mesas, the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde reflected a region-wide trend during the 13th century toward the aggregation of growing regional populations into close, highly defensible quarters. These population complexes hosted cultural and civic events and infrastructure that supported a vast outlying region hundreds of miles away linked by transportation roadways. Archaeologists suggested that the road's main purpose was to transport local and exotic goods to and from the canyon. 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 of their walls. Social and environmental turmoil appear to have been accelerated by several extended periods of drought and shortened growing seasons, and three centuries of expanding human populations had taken a toll on the region’s natural resources, wild game, and clean water. [19] Decorative motifs for these sandstone/mortar constructions, both cliff dwellings and not, included T-shaped windows and doors. [11][12], Evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the Sun Dagger petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Developed within these cultures, the people also adopted design details from other cultures as far away as contemporary Mexico. The settlements of the mid-seventh century were most commonly single-household or paired-household hamlets. Current explanations argue that the large influx of people from the northern villages, combined with the germ of what was learned from the failure of the first great house experiments, gave rise to an organizational model in which great houses were placed at the center of a more dispersed rural community instead of within villages. People began to grow food. [25] Early Pueblo I Era sites may have housed up to 600 individuals in a few separate but closely spaced settlement clusters. Stephen H. Lekson, A History of the Ancient Southwest (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2009). Habitations were abandoned, and tribes were split and divided and resettled far elsewhere. The Ancestral Pueblo people crafted a unique architecture with planned community spaces. Some modern descendants of this culture often choose to use the term "Ancestral Pueblo" peoples. In general, pottery used for cooking or storage in the region was unpainted gray, either smooth or textured. Pumice (a light, frothy rock that is full of gas) is a major component of the local volcanic tuff. Construction in Chaco Canyon all but ceased, and both its influence and population moved to other regions. For other uses, see, Ancient Native American culture in Four Corners region of the United States, Architecture – Pueblo complexes and Great Houses, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFStrutin1994 (, Kantner, John (2004). 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. However, they were generally occupied for 30 years or less. The south offered a historically secure and possibly more resilient locale for early agriculture, and at least half of the early farming populations in the Mesa Verde region likely could trace their origins to south of the San Juan River. [19], Not all of 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. [1] The Ancestral Puebloans are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara Tradition, who developed from the Picosa culture. Constructed well before 1492 AD, these Ancestral Pueblo towns and villages in the North American Southwest were located in various 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. Snow melt allowed the germination of seeds, both wild and cultivated, in the spring. Nine complexes each hosted an oversized Great Kiva, each up to 63 feet (19 m) in diameter. [30] This modest community appears to have been abandoned during the same time period. [30][34][35] 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. They say that the people migrated to areas in the southwest with more favorable rainfall and dependable streams. Many modern Pueblo tribes trace their lineage from specific settlements. The pictograph style with which they are associated is the called the Barrier Canyon Style. Archaeologist Timothy A. Kohler excavated large Pueblo I sites near Dolores, Colorado, and discovered that they were established during periods of above-average rainfall. They figured out how to irrigate their crops. [28] The contemporary Mississippian culture also collapsed during this period. The cultural diversity we see in the past is similar to modern Pueblo culture, which encompasses seven distinct languages and twenty-one pueblos, each under separate governance. This area is sometimes referred to as Oasisamerica in the region defining pre-Columbian southwestern North America. Some tall cylinders are considered ceremonial vessels, while narrow-necked jars may have been used for liquids. Mark D. Varien, Scott G. Ortman, Timothy A. Kohler, Donna M. Glowacki, and C. David Johnson, “Historical Ecology in the Mesa Verde Region: Results from the Village EcoDynamics Project,” American Antiquity 72 (April 2007). This is one of many elements of Ancestral Puebloan history that helps us understand the extraordinarily entangled histories of the modern Pueblos. Crops The archaeological record indicates that for Ancestral Puebloans to adapt to climatic change by changing residences and locations was not unusual. He asserts that isolated communities relied on raiding for food and supplies, and that internal conflict and warfare became common in the 13th century. They held a distinct knowledge of celestial sciences that found form in their architecture. Houses generally faced the south. The Chacoan structures altogether required the wood of 200,000 coniferous trees, mostly hauled—on foot—from mountain ranges up to 70 miles (110 km) away.[18][19].

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