Sections:
1. The Anasazi Culture
2. Anasazi Abandonment/Migration
3. The Chaco Culture
4. The Spanish Enter the Southwest
Readings
Chapter 7, "The Anasazi", The Archaeology of Ancient Arizona
Study Terms
Basketmaker II (500 B.C.-A.D. 600) |
Mesa Verde Kayenta Homolovi II Hisatsinom Pecos Conference Colorado Plateau Pueblo People kiva granaries Canyon de Chelly pottery pithouses pueblos rock shelters masonry Chacoan Culture |
Discussion
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.
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The Anasazi heartland was the Four Corners area, also referenced as the San Juan River drainage, until A.D. 1300, when this entire region was abandoned. Some Anasazi moved south and others east to settle along the Rio Grande. This rather sudden abandonment of the Four Corners has been attributed to agricultural shortfalls brought on by the Great Drought (A.D. 1276-1299) and to the territorial expansion of Numic-speaking peoples out of California and Nevada.
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.
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The Anasazi are distinguished from the Mogollon by a number of material traits and behavioral characteristics. Their decorated pottery is black-on-white and polychrome – most often black designs outlined in white on a red background slip. The everyday cooking vessels were gray. True pit houses appeared in the Basket Maker III Period and were distinguished from those of the Mogollon by having a roof entrance and a ventilator to bring fresh air into the dwelling. Later pueblos tended to be oriented in one direction, with storage rooms behind habitation rooms, facing an open area containing a subterranean kiva detached from the room block. Anasazi kivas, both small and large, tended to be circular in shape, but there was considerable variation across the various branches. Anasazi cradleboards produced a slight flattening to the back of the skull called lambdoidal deformation. The mortuary ritual was generally characterized by burying the deceased in a flexed or fetal position. The all-purpose hand ax was distinguished by a full hafting groove extending around the head.
