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Anasazi People
The ruins of Pueblo Bonita in Chaco Canyon show the communal living
of the Anasazi. (National Park Service)
{ahn-uh-sah'-zee}
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 b.c.), (2) Basket Maker II (100 b.c. to a.d. 400), (3) Basket
Maker III (400700), (4) Pueblo I (700900), (5) Pueblo II (9001100),
(6) Pueblo III (11001300), (7) Pueblo IV (13001600), 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 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 uninhabited
stretches 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, though precise evidence of the transition
has yet to be 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 b.c. to a.d. 1400
in the mountain areas of east central Arizona and west central New
Mexico. There is much evidence of trade and cultural interchange
between the Mogollon and the Anasazi.
The Basket Makers
Although direct evidence is as yet lacking, archaeologists have
postulated an initial phase of Anasazi culture, formerly designated
as Basket Maker I but now called Archaic. This would have been a
preagricultural, nonceramic stage during which the Basket Makers
were nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Although Basket Maker I remains hypothetical, Basket Maker II (100
b.c.a.d. 400) is fairly well known. The Basket Makers were given
their name because of the profusion of skillfully woven baskets
discovered in sites associated with their culture. Many of the baskets
have been well preserved by the exceedingly dry conditions in the
shallow caves where the Basket Makers stored their belongings. Numerous
other perishable items have also withstood the ravages of time,
including bags, sandals, and nets of yucca fiber. Clothing was scanty,
consisting of woven G-strings for the men and short skirts of fiber
for the women. The seminomadic Basket Makers of this period had
no bows and arrows, but in hunting deer and small game they relied
on light spears and darts, propelled by spear-throwers flexible
sticks that give additional force to the throw. Animals were also
caught by the Basket Makers with a variety of ingenious nets and
snares.
The Basket Makers had begun by this time to cultivate squash and
a type of maize. They lived in simple shelters of perishable materials
or in shallow caves or rock shelters. At least some of them made
more substantial houses of logs and mud over saucer-shaped depressions.
To supplement their meager harvests of farm crops, they roamed over
the country periodically on hunting and gathering expeditions. During
their absence, treasured articles and reserve supplies of food were
cached in storage pits or cists, excavated in the dry floors of
caves. The cists were used not only for storage, but also as sepulchers,
in which the dead were buried with accompanying mortuary offerings.
In some of the cists the unintentionally mummified bodies of Basket
Makers have been found, with hair and dehydrated flesh adhering
to the bones.
During Basket Maker III ( a.d. 400700) the Basket Makers expanded
their territory and introduced several new and important cultural
items, including pit houses, erected over shallow excavations, and
pottery. With the addition of beans and new varieties of maize,
agriculture became more important to Basket Maker subsistence. The
greater reliance on farming made it possible for the Basket Makers
to begin a sedentary mode of life in villages. Toward the end of
the period the spear was replaced by the bow and arrow.
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 by diffusion from alien cultures. The
Pueblo I and II periods (7001100) 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 (11001300). 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 (13001600), 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 from 1276 to 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.
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