Southwestern Indian Civilization: Anasazi

	1. Sites and major cultural divisions of the Southwest, from Brian M. Fagan, Ancient North America (Thames & Hudson, 1991). Added to the map is the area of the Fremont Civilization to the north and northwest. The extent to which these should be considered only regional cultures within one great Southwestern Indian Civilization is debated.
	2. There is a growing suspicion that the entire southwest was once part of a great system that included the San Juan River drainage system (including Aztec Ruins and Chaco Canyon), the Mimbres River, and the Rio Casas Grandes in Mexico, and to some extent perhaps the Fremont area to the North and Northwest. I consider the Pecos River Civilization in a Mexican context.

Architecture

	1. Anasazi ruins at Chaco Canyon. This urban complex eventually dominated the 25,000 square mile San Juan River drainage system from 900-1150 A.D., until it gave way to the emergence of regional cultures and eventually collapsed for reasons not entirely clear, but perhaps due to ecological impact and environmental change. We don't know how such a large population could be sustained in such an arid and unpredictable environment.
	2. Building construction, Chaco Canyon. Archaeologists derive a great deal of information by carefully observing the evolution of construction techniques and the roof timbers brought down from distant mesas.
	3. Aerial view of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. This is one of 9-12 pueblos in the canyon. The term pueblo simply means an above-ground construction in contrast to the earlier semi-subterreanean construction used in the region. The D-shape is typical, and the focus of the rooms was a collection of circular kivas near the center of the straight side. A kiva was a religious or ceremonial center of some kind.
	4. Pueblo Bonito was one of Chaco Canyon's Great Houses or pueblos, each a small town in itself. On average, the pueblos had 216 rooms and could be arranged in rows up to four stories high.
	5. Chetro Ketl, Chaco Canyon. The Chaco Canyon pueblos had many rooms, and on this basis it is supposed that the population of Chaco Canyon was perhaps 5000 or more. This seems far greater than the calculated bearing capacity of the agricultural base (2000 people?), which has led to the supposition that perhaps the pueblos were only periodic gathering places for a scattered population.
	6. After the Chaco Anasazi horizon (900-1150 A.D.), there emerged regional cultures. Then in about 1300 B.C., people living in the Mesa Verde region emigrated south to new pueblos. Here is the stone tower at Hovenweep National Monument on Utah-Colorado border, built circa 1200 A.D.
	7. Great House at Aztec Ruins. This only building so far excavated there.
	8. The Square Tower at Mesa Verde, which was part of a multi-storied apartment building originally having 80 rooms and seven kivas.
	9. Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde. Ca. 1200-1300 A.D. If you look closely, you will see the tourists, who provide some sense of scale.
	10. Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde. A relatively large cliff dwelling, with about 114 rooms and eight kivas.
	11. 13th century cliff house that was part of a scattered community of smaller dwellings near Sand Canyon Pueblo, Mesa Verde Region.
	12. Kiva at Sand Canyon Pueblo, Crow Canyon, Mesa Verde region, built after mid 13th century. Kivas were carefully constructed cylinders, up to 19 meters across, with pine beam roofs and walls at least eleven feet tall. They were entered by ladder or through recessed staircases. Typically they were equiped with wall niches to hold beads and pendants related to ritual, encircling benches around the wall's interior, pairs of masonry lined vaults, and a raised firebox in the center.

Pottery

	1. Chaco Canyon. Coolidge corrugated pitcher made in Pueblo I-II period (American Museum of Natural History, New York). 13 cm. Betwen 700 and 900 A.D., the Anasazi Indians moved from pit houses in small villages to live in surface masonry buildings modeled on earlier (Basketmaker period) storerooms, often facing southeast for the warmth of the winter sun. The D-shaped layout make the rooms equi-distant from a point at the middle of the straight side. Here at the focus was originally round pithouses, which in time became a kivas.
	2. Anasazi black-on-white pitchers from Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, with wide ranging dates (American Museum of Natural History, New York). Height approx. 14 cm.
	3. Mesa Verde black-on-white bowls (Crow Canyon Archaeological Center). These were a common article of trade in the region in ca. 1180-1300.
	3. Pitcher from Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon (American Museum of Natural History, New York). 14 cm tall.
	4. Cylinder jars from Pueblo Bonito, probably prestige burial goods (American Museum of Natural History, New York). Jar at left is 26 cm.
	5. Chaco Canyon. Black-on-white pottery ladles of various ages (American Museum of Natural History, New York). The left one is 23 cm.; the right one has a rattle handle.
	6. Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. Black-on-white pitcher is typical of the ware produced 1075-1200 A.D. (American Museum of Natural History, New York). 18 cm.
	7. Site Bc53, Chaco Canyon. Wingate black-on-red three-lobed jar with mask motif (American Museum of Natural History, New York). 15 cm.

Miscellaneous

	1. Turquoise beads from Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon (American Museum of Natural History, New York). Beads were a prestige good as well as a medium of exchange. Average dia. 4-5 mm. We are not sure of the population of the pueblos, and their many rooms may have been only periodically used for ceremony, or for a system of food redistribution, or for turquoise processing and other manufactures.
	2. The wicker or basketry core of this turquoise-covered container is gone (American Museum of \ Natural History, New York). Height 16 cm. In the 10th century, Chaco Canyon emerged as a major processing center of turquoise, converting the raw material imported from New Mexico into finished exports. Other exported manufacturers seem to have been pottery, macaw feather products, wicker or basketry, copper bells, sea shell trumpets, wooden effigies, etc.
	3. Chaco Canyon, deer bone ceremonial spatulae, inlaid with turquoise and jet (American Museum of Natural History, New York).
	4. Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. Jet effigy of a frog (American Museum of Natural History, New York). 8.5 cm. The frog was a symbol of water in Anasazi culture. Jet (a dense form of coal) was a highly valued substance.
	5. Macaw feather and squirrel pelt sash from southeastern Utah, dated ca. 920 A.D. (Edge of the Cedars State Park, Utah). Of Anasazi manufacture, perhaps for export. The feathers came from Casas Grandes in Mexico, which bred macaws to support feather export throughout the southwest.
	6. From a sealed wall niche in the Great Kiva, Chetro Ketl, Chaco Canyon. Prestige jewelery or offering neckace of Olivella shell beads and black and white stones (American Museum of Natural History, New York). Length 400 cm.
	7. Painted wooden plaque from Pueblo Bonito, which may have been an insignia of rank (American Museum of Natural History, New York).