MESA VERDE Environment of Mesa Verde, Colorado Wetherill Mesa Studies

From 1959 to 1963, the National Park Service, with generous support from the National Geographic Society, made a comprehensive study of the archeology and ecology of Wetherill Mesa, in Mesa Verde National Park. Wetherill Mesa is being developed so that increasing numbers of visitors will be able to observe the evolution of a prehistoric Indian culture over some 700 years, both here and in the nearby and more familiar section of the park known as Chapin Mesa.

This is the second monograph of the Wetherill Mesa Project. The report not only provides substantive data on environmental variations at Mesa Verde and their bearing on the prehistoric settlement pattern and land use of the area, but also demonstrates the critical importance of such research to a fuller understanding of human ecology of the past elsewhere. James A. Erdman, now with the U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, and Charles L. Douglas, now on the staff of the Texas Memorial Museum, University of Texas, Austin, came to the Wetherill Mesa Project from the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, in Boulder. John W. Marr is director of the Institute.

Additional reports in the Wetherill Mesa series will deal with several other aspects of the archeology and ecology of the area.

George B. Hartzog, Jr. Director