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Postcards from Anasazi Ruins

   
Anasazi

Anasazi (from a NAVAJO Indian word meaning "the ancient ones") is the term archaeologists use to denote the cultures of the prehistoric Basket Makers and the PUEBLO Indians of North America. Anasazi culture has been divided into eight periods, as follows: (1) Archaic (5500-100 BC), (2) Basket Maker II (100 BC to AD 400), (3) Basket Maker III (400-700), (4) Pueblo I (700-900), (5) Pueblo II (900-1100), (6) Pueblo III (1100-1300), (7) Pueblo IV (1300-1600), and (8) Pueblo V (1600 to present).

The Anasazi built the numerous communal dwellings, or pueblos, many now in ruins, on the high plateau of the Southwestern United States. The oldest remains are in the Four Corners region, where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah adjoin. At the time of its greatest extent, the Anasazi culture was spread over most of New Mexico, northern Arizona, southwestern Colorado, and much of Utah. This is a region comparable in size to modern France, but great stretches of uninhabited land lay between the villages, which were located where water was available.

Origins

The Anasazi culture is believed to have gradually evolved out of a nonagricultural base of the ancient Desert culture, once widespread in western North America, although precise evidence of the transition has not yet been discovered. It may have been in part derived from the Mogollon culture, an older tradition of settled agriculturalists and ceramics producers who flourished from c.100 BC to AD 1400 in the mountain areas of east central Arizona and west central New Mexico. There are many evidences of trade and cultural interchange between the Mogollon and the Anasazi.

The Pueblo People

Pueblo culture developed directly out of that of the Basket Makers and continued the same basic mode of life, elaborated with inventions and innovations, and enriched also by diffusion from alien cultures. The Pueblo I and II periods (700-1100) represented a time of territorial expansion and transition to the later cultural climax of the Anasazi tradition. Among the important developments were the introduction of cotton cloth, the building of above-ground houses of stone and adobe masonry, and the improvement of pottery. The Pueblo people were experimenting at this time in the building of houses, but the trend was toward single-story, multiroom pueblos of stone and adobe masonry. The old pit houses persisted in some districts, and in other places they survived as ceremonial chambers called KIVAS. Villages were usually located on the tops of mesas or at the edges of canyons. Pottery was of two general types: culinary wares in which the coils were pinched to produce a corrugated effect, and decorated wares with black designs in elaborate patterns on a white background.

The climax of Pueblo development was reached during the Pueblo III period (1100-1300). Anasazi achievements in art and architecture were then at their height. The finest styles of black-on-white and corrugated pottery date from Pueblo III, and polychrome wares appeared with black-and-white designs on orange or red backgrounds. During this period were constructed the spectacular cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado, huge apartment houses of stone and adobe masonry built on ledges in the cliffs.

Despite the cultural culmination achieved during Pueblo III (and during Pueblo IV to a more limited extent), the ultimate decline of the Anasazi was forecast. Toward the end of the period, and continuing into Pueblo IV (1300-1600), there was marked contraction of Pueblo territory, with a gradual abandonment of the outlying areas. This may have been due in part to raids by marauding nomads, in part to factional quarrels among the Pueblo, and in part to a prolonged drought between 1276 and 1299 that caused famine. The people were obliged to migrate to places with a better water supply to the south and east, particularly to the drainage area of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, to the HOPI country in northeastern Arizona, and to the ZUNI country of western New Mexico. Pueblo V (c.1600 on) marks the start of the historic period, which dates from the time of the arrival of the first Spanish colonists in the Southwest. The Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblo peoples of today are the direct descendants of the prehistoric Anasazi, although the Zuni have merged with the Mogollon descendants. (See Grolier Encyclopedia, 1991)