![]() ![]() The first corn was not well adapted to the short growing seasons and dry climate, and the resulting corncobs were only an inch or two long. Climatic shifts also limited human occupation in the area.īetween about 2100 to 1200 BC, increasingly reliable summer precipitation and the introduction of maize from the south allowed for early horticulture. Consequently, the population was restricted to small groups that used particular areas seasonally. But these resources, even when teamed with the wild grasses, berries, and other native plants of the area, necessitated a mobile lifestyle and tremendous seasonal flexibility. In good years, the piñon nut harvest could be remarkable and large game such as mule deer, pronghorn, elk, and bighorn sheep offered fine hunting opportunities at certain times and locales throughout the year. ![]() The semiarid and arid upland landscape of the Colorado Plateau and Southern Rocky Mountains had patches of wild resources that were not reliable subsistence sources. The environment of the Four Corners made hunting and gathering difficult. Agriculture in the Northern Southwest (350 BC–AD 575 ) The roots of this culture date back more than two millennia, to the very beginnings of agriculture and settled life in the northern Southwest. Over the last 125 years, historians, archaeologists, and Pueblo tribal authorities have worked to untangle Ancestral Puebloan history to better understand how this tradition has shaped the customs and ways of life of modern Pueblo people.Īll Pueblo culture shares in common an agricultural heritage focused on the cultivation of maize (corn) and a sedentary or semi-sedentary lifestyle centered on large village communities, or pueblos. When Spanish conquistadors encountered the Pueblo groups in the sixteenth century, they found at least 50,000 to 60,000 people in approximately seventy-five Pueblo villages in what is now New Mexico and Arizona. The cultural diversity we see in the past is similar to modern Pueblo culture, which encompasses seven distinct languages and twenty-one pueblos, each under separate governance. The two branches of the Ancestral Pueblo tradition discussed in this summary-Mesa Verde and Chaco-are distinguishable from one another by differences in their pottery styles, architecture, and settlements, but they also shared a great deal in common. They drew upon the Navajo workmen who helped them with some of their investigations and who called these ancient people ʾ anaasází, translated as “old people,” “enemy ancestors,” or “ancient non-Navajos.” As archaeologists have increasingly associated many aspects of this ancient cultural tradition with the modern Pueblos, the term Ancestral Pueblo has gradually replaced Anasazi in archaeological literature as a more appropriate term. Although many early researchers drew inspiration from the historic Pueblos in their interpretations of the architecture and practices of the Ancestral Pueblo, they did not always make a clear link between this ancient culture and historic Pueblo peoples. Kidder referred to what we now call the Ancestral Pueblo tradition as the Anasazi. Early Archaeology and TerminologyĮarly investigators such as Richard Wetherill and Alfred V. The other two traditions are the Hohokam and Mogollon, neither of which extends into Colorado. It is one of three major cultural traditions defined by archaeologists in the four southwestern states (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah). ![]() The sites and histories of this ancestral culture are still valued today in song and prayer by the Pueblo peoples now residing in New Mexico and Arizona.Īncestral Pueblo refers to both the ancient cultural tradition and the peoples once found in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. The great southward migration from this region by AD 1300 marks the end of the Ancestral Puebloan occupation in southwestern Colorado. 350 BC and AD 1300 and are found throughout southwestern Colorado and other adjacent states of the Four Corners region. The structures of this culture date to between ca. The people who built the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde and the great houses of Chaco Canyon were subsistence farmers of corn, beans, and squash. Formerly labeled Anasazi, the Ancestral Puebloan culture is the most widely known of the ancient cultures of Colorado. ![]()
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