Mesa Verde National Park

 
Cultural History

About 1500 years ago, a group of Indians living in the Four Corners region chose Mesa Verde as their home. For more than 700 years their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone cities in the sheltered recesses of the canyon walls. Then in the late 1200s, within the span of one or two generations, they abandoned their homes and mysteriously moved away forever.

Mesa Verde National Park preserves a spectacular remnant of this thousand-year-old culture. We call these people the Anasazi, from a Navajo word meaning the ancient ones. They left no written records and much that was important in their lives has perished. Yet the ruins speak of a people adept at building, artistic in their crafts and skillful at wresting a living from a difficult land. They are evidence of a society that over the centuries accumulated skills and traditions and passed them on from one generation to another. By classic times (1100 to 1300 AD), the Anasazi of Mesa Verde were the heirs of a vigorous civilization, with accomplishments in community living and the arts that rank among the finest expressions of human culture in ancient America.

The first Anasazi settled in Mesa Verde about 550 AD. They are known as Basketmakers because of their impressive skill at that craft. Formerly a nomadic people, they were just beginning to lead a more settled way of life as farming replaced hunting-and-gathering. These early Anasazi lived in pithouses clustered into small villages, which they usually built on the mesa tops. They soon learned how to make pottery, and they acquired the bow and arrow, a more efficient weapon for hunting than the atlatl, or spear thrower.

Pithouses

The pithouse represents the beginnings of a settled way of life, based on agriculture. Its basic features were a living room, squarish in shape and sunk a few feet into the ground with four main timbers at the corners to support the roof, a firepit with an air deflector, and an antechamber, which might contain storage bins or pits. Pithouses evolved into the kivas of later times. In Mesa Verde, the Anasazi lived in this type of dwelling from about 550 to 750 AD.

About 750 AD, they began building houses above ground, with upright walls made of poles and mud. They built these houses one against another in long, curving rows often with a pithouse or two in front. The pithouses were probably the forerunners of the kivas of later times. From this time on, these people are known as Pueblos, a Spanish word for village dwellers.

By about 1000 AD, the Anasazi had advanced from pole-and-adobe construction to skillful stone masonry. Their walls of thick, double-coursed stone often rose two or three stories high and were joined together into units of 50 rooms or more. Pottery also changed, as black drawings on a white background replaced crude designs on dull gray. Farming provided more of their diet than before, and much mesa-top land was cleared for that purpose.

The years from 1100 to 1300 AD are called Mesa Verde's classic period. The population may have reached several thousand at this time. It was mostly concentrated in compact villages of many rooms, often with the kivas built inside the enclosing walls rather than out in the open. Round towers began to appear, and there was a rising level of craftsmanship in masonry work, pottery, weaving, jewelry and tool-making. The stone walls of the large pueblos are regarded as the finest ever built in Mesa Verde; they are made of carefully shaped stones laid up in straight courses.

 

Cliff Houses

The Anasazi began to move back into the cliff alcoves that had sheltered their ancestors long centuries before. We don't know why they made this move. Perhaps it was for defense; perhaps the caves offered better protection from the elements; perhaps there were religious or psychological reasons. Whatever the reason or combination of reasons, it gave rise to the cliff dwellings for which Mesa Verde is famous.

Most of the cliff dwellings were built in the middle decades of the 1200s. They range in size from one room houses to villages of over 200 rooms (Cliff Palace). Architecturally, there is no standard ground plan. The builders fitted their structures to the available space. Most walls were single courses of stone, perhaps because the alcove roofs limited heights and also protected them from erosion by the weather. The masonry work varied in quality; rough construction can be found alongside walls with well shaped stones. Many rooms were plastered on the inside and decorated with painted designs.

The Anasazi lived in the cliff houses for less than a hundred years. By 1300 Mesa Verde was deserted. Here is another mystery. We know that the last quarter of the century was a time of drought and crop failures. Maybe after hundreds of years of intensive use the land and its resources -- the soil, the forests and animals -- were depleted. When the Anasazi left, they may have traveled south into New Mexico and Arizona, perhaps settling among their kin already there. Whatever happened, it seems likely that some Pueblo Indians today are descendants of the cliff dwellers of Mesa Verde.

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