Chapter 7, "The Anasazi", The Archaeology of Ancient Arizona.

Anasazi, a Navajo word usually translated as "ancient enemies," was introduced by A.V. Kidder in 1936 to replace Basket Maker-Pueblo as the archaeological label for the prehistoric ancestors of the historical Pueblo people of northern Arizona and New Mexico. The Navajo are not descendants of the Anasazi, and some Pueblo people prefer to use a term from their own language, such as the Hopi "Hisatsinom", to refer to their prehistoric ancestors. Many modern archaeologists prefer the term "Ancestral Pueblo," but we will use Anasazi here because this is the most common label in the literature.

The Anasazi are the best known of the major cultures of Southwest prehistory. Their cultural sequence is divided into six periods (Basket Maker II and III, Pueblo I, II, III, and IV),and is securely dated by dendrochronology. Their territory is divided into two large regions — Eastern Anasazi in northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado, and Western Anasazi in northern Arizona and southern Utah. These large regions are further subdivided into branches, the most important of which are the Chaco and Mesa Verde branches in the east, and the Kayenta Branch in the west.

The other major event of Anasazi prehistory was the emergence of Chaco Culture in northwestern New Mexico and its rapid spread to dominate all but the Kayenta branch. Chaco Culture is one of the topics of Module 8.