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Ancient Pueblo People or
Ancestral Puebloans were a
prehistoric Native American culture centered on the present-day
Four Corners area of the
Southwest United States, noted for their distinctive pottery and dwelling construction styles. The cultural group is often referred to as the
Anasazi.
Archaeologists still debate when a distinct
culture emerged, but the current consensus, based on terminology defined by the
Pecos Classification, suggests their emergence around
1200 BCE, during the
Basketmaker II Era. Beginning with the earliest explorations and excavations, researchers have believed that the Ancient Puebloans are ancestors of the modern
Pueblo peoples. In general, modern Pueblo people claim these ancient people as their ancestors.
Geography
The Ancient Pueblo were one of four major prehistoric archaeological traditions of the American Southwest. The others are the
Mogollon,
Hohokam and
Patayan. In relation to neighboring cultures, the Ancient Pueblo occupied the northeast quadrant of the area. The Ancient Pueblo 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
Colorado and
Little Colorado rivers in
Arizona and the
Rio Puerco and
Rio Grande in New Mexico. However, evidence of Ancient Pueblo culture has been found extending east onto the American
Great Plains, in areas near the
Cimarron and
Pecos rivers and in the Galisteo Basin.
Terrain and resources within this massive region vary greatly. The
plateau regions are generally high, with elevations ranging from 4500 to 8500 feet (1350–2600 meters). Extensive horizontal
mesas are capped by sedimentary formations and support woodlands of
junipers,
pinon,
ponderosa pines, and yellow pines, each favoring different elevations. Wind and water erosion have created steep walled canyons, and sculpted windows and bridges out of the
sandstone landscape. In areas where erosionally resistant strata (sedimentary rock layers) such as sandstone or
limestone overlie more easily eroded strata such as shale, rock overhangs formed. These overhangs were favored sites for shelters and building sites. The range country in areas such as the
San Juan,
Gallup and
Albuquerque basins is low and arid, supporting desert grasses and shrubs. Streams in these regions allow the growth of willows and reeds, and were utilized by the Ancient Pueblo for agriculture. Mountains in the region are as tall as 12,000 feet (3650 meters), and provided timber, game, minerals, and the specialized stone used for flaked tools.
In the Southwest, access to water was essential. All areas of the Ancient Pueblo homeland suffered from periods of drought and wind and water erosion. Summer rains could be undependable and often arrived in destructive thunderstorms. While the amount of winter snowfall varied greatly, the Ancient Pueblo 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 Ancient Pueblo 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 important to the ancient culture, as smaller streams were more easily diverted or controlled for irrigation.
Cultural characteristics
The Ancient Pueblo culture is perhaps best-known for the
jacal, or adobe and sandstone dwellings built along cliff walls, particularly during the
Pueblo II and
Pueblo III eras. The best-preserved examples of those dwellings are in
National Parks (USA), parks such as Chaco Canyon or
Chaco Culture National Historical Park,
Mesa Verde National Park,
Hovenweep National Monument,
Bandelier National Monument, and
Canyon de Chelly National Monument. These villages, called pueblos by Mexican settlers, were often only accessible by rope or through rock climbing.
However, these astonishing building achievements had more modest beginnings. The first Ancestral Puebloan homes and villages were based on the pit-house, a common feature in the Basketmaker periods.
The Ancestral Puebloans are also known for their unique style of pottery, today considered valuable for their rarity. They also created many petroglyphs and pictographs.
Origins
The period from 700-1130 CE saw a rapid increase in population due to consistent and regular rainfall patterns. From studies of skeletal remains, this growth was due to increased fertility rather than decreased mortality. However, this tenfold increase in population over the course of a few generations couldn't be achieved by increased birthrate alone; likely it also involved migrations of peoples from surrounding areas. Innovations such as pottery, food storage, and agriculture enabled this rapid growth. Over several decades, the Ancient Pueblo culture spread across the landscape. Anasazi culture has been divided into three main areas or branches, based on geographical location:
Chaco Canyon (northwest New Mexico),
Kayenta (northeast Arizona), and Northern San Juan (or
Mesa Verde) (southwest Colorado).
Modern Pueblo oral traditions hold that they originated to the north of their current settlements, from
Shibapu, where they emerged from the underworld through a lake. For unknown ages they were led by war chiefs guided by the Great Spirit across North America. They settled first in the Anasazi areas for a few hundred years, then migrated to their current location. The migrations were undertaken in furtherance of a perfection ethos and to remain in harmony with the environment and preserve the people from total annihilation.
Migration from the homeland
It isn't entirely clear why the Ancestral Puebloans migrated from their established homes in the 12th and 13th centuries. Factors examined and discussed include global or regional climate change, prolonged periods of drought, cyclical periods of topsoil erosion, environmental degradation, de-forestation, hostility from new arrivals, religious or cultural change, and even influence from Mesoamerican cultures. Many of these possibilities are supported by archaeological evidence.
Current opinion holds that the Ancestral Puebloans responded to pressure from
Numic-speaking peoples moving onto the Colorado Plateau as well as climate change which resulted in
agricultural failures. The archaeological record indicates that it wasn't unusual for ancient Pueblo peoples to adapt to climatic change by changing residences and locations. Early Pueblo I sites may have housed up to 600 individuals in a few separate but closely spaced settlement clusters. However, they were generally occupied for a mere 30 years or less. Archaeologist
Timothy A. Kohler excavated large Pueblo I sites near
Dolores, Colorado, and discovered that they were established during periods of above-average rainfall. This would allow crops to be grown without benefit of irrigation. At the same time, nearby areas experiencing significantly drier patterns were abandoned.
The ancient Pueblos attained a cultural "Golden Age" between about 900 and 1130. During this time, generally classed as Pueblo II, the climate was relatively warm and rainfall mostly adequate. Communities grew larger and were inhabited for longer periods of time. Highly specific local traditions in architecture and pottery emerged, and trade over long distances appears to have been common.
Domesticated turkeys appear. After approximately 1150, North America experienced significant climatic change in the form of a 300 year drought, which also led to the collapse of the Tiwanaku civilization around Lake Titicaca. Confirming evidence is found in excavations of western regions in the Mississippi Valley between 1150 and 1350, which show long lasting patterns of warmer, wetter winters and cooler, drier summers. 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. However, the population of the region continued to be mobile, abandoning settlements and fields under adverse conditions.
Along with this change in precipitation patterns was a drop in water table levels, due to a different cycle unrelated to rainfall. This forced the abandonment of settlements in the more arid or over-farmed locations.
Evidence also suggests a profound change in the 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, tribes split and divided and resettled far elsewhere. This evidence suggests that the religious structures were deliberately abandoned slowly over time. Puebloan tradition holds that the ancestors had achieved great spiritual power and control over natural forces, and 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 felt they caused due to their abuse of their spiritual power, and thus make amends with nature.
Most modern Pueblo peoples (whether Keresans,
Hopi, or Tanoans) and historians like James W. Loewen, in his book
Lies Across America, assert the ancient Pueblo didn't "vanish" as is commonly portrayed in media presentations or popular books, but migrated to areas in the Southwest with more favorable rainfall and dependable streams. They merged into the various pueblo peoples whose descendants still live in Arizona and New Mexico. This perspective isn't new and was also presented in reports from early 20th century anthropologists, including
Frank Hamilton Cushing,
J. Walter Fewkes and
Alfred V. Kidder. Many modern Pueblo tribes trace their lineage from settlements. Evidence also suggests that a profound change took place in the Anasazi area and areas inhabited by their cultural neighbors, the
Mogollon. For example, the
San Ildefonso Pueblo people believe that their ancestors lived in both the Mesa Verde and the Bandelier areas.
Warfare and cannibalism
Stress on the environment may have been reflected in the social structure, leading to conflict and warfare. Near
Kayenta, Arizona, Jonathan Haas of the Field Museum in Chicago has been studying a group of Anasazi villages that relocated from the canyons to the high mesa tops during the late 1200s. The only reason Haas can see for a move so far from water and arable land is 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
Utes,
Shoshones and
Piutes, who may have originated in what is today
California.
A 1997 excavation at
Cowboy Wash near
Dolores, Colorado found remains of at least twenty-four human skeletons that showed evidence of violence and dismemberment, with strong indications of
cannibalism. This modest community appears to have been abandoned during the same time period. (LeBlanc, p. 174) Other excavations within the Ancient Pueblo culture area produce varying numbers of unburied, and in some cases dismembered, bodies. This evidence of warfare, conflict, and cannibalism is hotly debated by some scholars and interest groups, and archaeological conclusions may be strongly attacked.
Cultural distinctions
Archaeological cultural units such as "Anasazi",
Hohokam,
Patayan or Mogollon are used by
archaeologists to define material culture similarities and differences that may identify prehistoric socio-cultural 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 shouldn't 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.
Anasazi as a cultural label
The term "Anasazi" was established in archaeological terminology through the Pecos Classification system in 1927. 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." [TheNavajo word is
anaasází (<
anaa- "enemy",
sází "ancestor").]
It is unfortunate that a non-Pueblo word has come to stand for a tradition that's 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. (Cordell, pp. 18-19)
Some modern Pueblo peoples object to the use of the term
Anasazi, although there's still controversy among them on a native alternative. Some modern descendants of this culture often choose to use the term "pueblo peoples." The modern Hopi use the word "
Hisatsinom" in preference to Anasazi.
However, Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department (NNHPD) spokesperson Ronald Maldonado has indicated the Navajo don't favor use of the term "Ancestral Puebloan." In fact, reports submitted for review by NNHPD are rejected if they include use of the term.
Limitations on cultural conventions
When making use of modern cultural divisions in the American Southwest, it's important to understand three limitations in the current conventions:
- 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. Languages spoken by these people and their beliefs and behavior are difficult to decipher from physical materials.
- Cultural divisions are tools of the modern scientist, and so shouldn't be considered similar to divisions or relationships the ancient residents may have recognized. Modern cultures in this region, many of whom claim some of these ancient people as ancestors, contain 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 characterized 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 Ancient Pueblo peoples, tends to create an image of territories separated by clear-cut boundaries, like border bounderies separating modern states. These simply didn't 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." (Plog, p. 72.) 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 Ancient Pueblos and their greater differences from the Hohokam and Patayan is due to both the geography and the variety of climate zones in the Southwest.
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