Park Brochure

The Living Past

[ Page 10 ]

The first Ancestral Puebloan people settled in Mesa Verde ( Spanish for "green table" ) about AD 550. They have become known as Basketmakers because of their impressive skill at that craft. Formerly a nomadic people, they gradually began to lead a more settled way of life. Farming replaced hunting-and-gathering as their main source of livelihood. They lived in pithouses clustered into small villages, which they usually built on the mesa tops but occasionally in the cliff recesses. They soon learned to make pottery, and 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 increasingly on agriculture. Its basic features included a living room, squarish in shape and sunk a few feet into the ground four main timbers at the corners, a firepit with an air deflector, an antechamber, which might contain storage bins or pits, and a sipapu. Pithouses evolved into the kivas of later times. In Mesa Verde, the Ancestral Puebloans lived in this type of dwelling from about AD 550 to 750.

AD 550-750 were fairly prosperous times for the Basketmakers, and their population multiplied. About AD 750 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, these people are referred to as Puebloans, a Spanish word for village dwellers.

By AD 1000 the people in this area had advanced from pole-and-adobe construction to stone masonry. Their walls of thick, double-coursed stone often rose two or three stories high and were joined together into 50 room units. Pottery also changed, as black drawings on a white background replaced corrugated grayware designs on dull gray. Cultivated foods provided a greater proportion of the diet than before, and much mesa-top land was cleared for that purpose. In general, people did not evolve from primitive to advanced. Rather they experimented with a variety of methods in order to be successful.

Mesa Verde's classic period stretched from AD 1100-1300. The population grew to several thousand. Compact villages of many rooms, often with the kivas built inside the enclosing walls rather than out in the open became common. Round towers began to appear as part of the architecture. Additionally, and there was a rising level of craftsmanship in masonry work, pottery, weaving, jewelry, and even tool-making improved. 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 in straight courses. Baskets show evidence of decline in workmanship, but this may be due to the widespread use of pottery. About AD 1200 experienced another major population shift. The Ancestral Puebloan people began to move back into the cliff alcoves that had once sheltered their ancestors. We will never know the exact combination of factors that precipitated this move. Perhaps the move was for defense; or maybe the caves offered better protection from the elements; although perhaps there were religious or psychological reasons as well. Whatever the exact combination of reasons, this move 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 150 rooms (Cliff Palace and Long House). Architecturally, there is no standard ground plan. The builders fitted their structures to the available space. Most walls were single courses of stone. 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 Ancestral Puebloans lived in the cliff houses for less than a hundred years. By AD 1300 most of the Mesa Verde people had moved. The last quarter of the 13th century was a time of drought and subsequent crop failures. Perhaps after hundreds of years of intensive land use and resource depletion, Mesa Verde was no longer a successful place to live.

When the people left, they traveled south into New Mexico and Arizona, perhaps settling among their kin already there. Pueblo Indians today are descendants of the cliff dwellers of the Mesa Verde.

The Kiva Kiva is a Hopi word for "Ceremonial room." Ancestral Puebloan kivas were underground chambers. The kivas at Mesa Verde are keyhole shaped. Based upon modern Pueblo practice, the people in early times may have used kivas to conduct healing rites, or to pray for rain, pray for luck in hunting, or for luck in growing abundant crops. Kivas probably also served as a place for social gatherings and daily chores like weaving. A thick wooden roof covered with mud enclosed each kiva; access was by ladder through a hole in the center. The small hole in the floor is a sipapu, the symbolic entrance to the underworld.

 

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