![]() ![]() 900-1150 CE) were technically exacting and rather efficient. We do not know the details surrounding recruitment of construction crews but we do know that most Pueblo Bonito period construction projects (c. The following spring work crews were assembled and began construction, likely under the supervision of expert building planners. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of tabular sandstone blocks where shaped and stacked at the site of both a new or expanded great house project. This activity is still echoed in modern pueblos ritual beam races, where teams of young men compete to be the first to arrive with large roof beams cut from those same mountains. To implement those plans, sizable beams (primarily mountain spruce and ponderosa pine) were cut from mountain districts 25-50 miles away and carried to construction sites. JW: Do we know how the great centers of Anasazi civilization–like Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) and Hovenweep (Utah)–were constructed so efficiently and what kinds of tools were involved in their construction? Were similar technologies used in the creation of Anasazi cliff dwellings like those of Canyon de Chelly (Arizona) and Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde (Colorado), in your opinion?ĭS: Organized building plans characterized the Chaco Canyon core. This strategy reduced the consequences of crop failures in any one district by moving surplus food resources through the great house trade network for redistribution to districts where crops had failed. They also had a vast network of trade, which connected them socially and economically with farmers in other climatologically distinct districts or settlements. That water was then used to supply a sophisticated local irrigation system. In the Chaco region of New Mexico, after 800 CE, they built upon the talus slopes of cliffs and placed crops nearby to collect water runoff from the mesa tops. These solutions involved some dry farming, selecting for larger crop yields, more efficient food processing, and increased storage facilities so that the good agricultural years could offset the all too common poor ones. As the population increased more complex solutions were needed, as the best water localities had long been exhausted. They also hunted both large and small game for meat. These included the following: piñon and acorn a variety of wild grass seeds yucca root wild amaranth choke cherries wolf berries sunflower seeds and many other wild vegetals of lesser importance. From about 300 CE to 800 CE prehistoric farmers sought out marshes and other areas where the water table was near the surface, planted mixed crops of corn, beans, squash, and relied heavily on continued foraging for wild plant resources. 400-1350 CE, where the environment is so foreboding and precarious? How were they even able to farm and irrigate their crops?ĭS & JL: The Ancestral Puebloans (also called the “Anasazi”) managed to survive in resource-limited environments by utilizing several key features. JW: I would like to begin by asking what social, economic, and ecological forces enabled the Anasazi to thrive in the American Southwest, from c. Probing through fact and fiction while sharing their research, these scholars reveal some curious truths about this most remarkable civilization. ![]() Stuart, a renown expert on the Ancient Puebloans and Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, and two of his research assistants, Ms. ![]() In this exclusive interview, James Blake Wiener of the Ancient History Encyclopedia took the time to speak with Dr. In wake of their “rediscovery” by archaeologists over 100 years ago, many questions still remain as to how they were able to create a civilization in such a harsh climate and why their decline was so sudden. Long revered and venerated as the ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, and other Puebloan dwellers, this remarkable civilization, characterized by its impressive architecture, sophisticated systems of irrigation, and understanding astronomical phenomena, flourished from c. Thousands of archaeological sites, spread about across the American states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, testify to the presence of a advanced civilization: the “Anasazi” or the Ancestral/Ancient Puebloan peoples. The American Desert Southwest has some of the most impressive prehistoric ruins and artifacts in the world. ![]()
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