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For over 700 years their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone cities in the sheltered recesses of the canyon walls. From the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries, many of the pueblos in Chaco Canyon were abandoned. What caused people to leave the pueblos, the centers of Anasazi society? Scientists have found one possible answer by looking at tree rings (a study called dendrochronology) in the Sand Canyon area. In the period between A.D. 1125 and 1180, very little rain fell in the region. After 1180, rainfall briefly returned to normal. From 1270 to 1274 there was another long drought, followed by another period of normal rainfall. In 1275, yet another drought began. This one lasted 14 years.
Was drought alone the only factor in the mass abandonment of the pueblos? Some archaeologists now believe that other factors — religious upheaval, internal political conflict, or even warfare — may have combined to exacerbate the effects of the drought. Whatever the root causes of the famine were, the archaeological evidence clearly shows it was devastating to the Anasazi.
Ever since local cowboys discovered the cliff dwellings a century ago, archaeologists have been trying to understand the life of these people. But despite decades of excavation, analysis, classification, and comparison our knowledge is still sketchy. We will never know the whole story of their existence, for they left no written records and much that was important in their lives has perished.
Yet for all their silence, these ruins speak with a certain eloquence. They tell of a people adept at building, artistic in their crafts, and skillful at wresting a living from a difficult land. They are evidence of a society that over the centuries accumulated skills and traditions and passed them on from one generation to another.
By classic times (A.D. 1100 to 1300),the Anasazi of Mesa Verde were the heirs of a vigorous civilization, with accomplishments in community living and the arts that rank among the finest expressions of human culture in ancient America.
Much of the daily routine took place in the open courtyards in front of the rooms. The women fashioned pottery there, while the men made various tools--knives, axes, awls, scrapers--out of stone and bone. The fires built in summer were mainly for cooking. In winter when the alcove rooms were damp and uncomfortable, fires probably burned throughout the village. Smoke-blackened walls and ceilings are reminders of the biting cold these people lived with for half of every year.
Clothing closely followed the seasons. In summer, adults wore simple loincloths and sandals. In winter they dressed in hides and skins and wrapped themselves against the cold in blankets made of turkey feathers and robes of rabbit fur.
Getting food was a ceaseless struggle, even in the best of years. Farming was the main business of the people, but they supplemented their crops of corn beans and squash by gathering wild plants and hunting deer, rabbits, squirrels, and other game. Their domestic animals were dogs and turkeys.
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Fortunately for us, the Anasazi tossed their trash close by. Scraps of food, broken pottery and tools, anything unwanted went down the slope in front of their houses. Much of what we know about daily life here comes from these garbage heaps.
Although they used the cliff alcoves consistently throughout the time they were in the area, they did not build the cliff dwellings as such until around AD 1200. The dwellings represent a massive construction project, yet the people lived in them only about 75 to 100 years. By AD 1300 they had migrated on to other areas to the south. As you walk through Cliff Palace, keep in mind that this structure continues to hold many secrets which archeologists will never be able to unravel. Although we have many theories about why they left their homes, we really don't know the exact reason why they moved.
The tower like structure behind the kiva to the south is one of the tallest sections of Cliff Palace. It would have appeared more as an apartment house complex to the modern eye in the 1200s with other walls surrounding the ones you now see. It is thought that this "tower" was designated for special use.
Commencing about 920 in what was apparently the first major affiliation of settlements anywhere in the Anasazi territories, a network of more than 70 villages, called outliers, grew up around the Chaco center. This interconnected, interrelated grid ultimately stretched for 250 miles from north to south. Along an eight-mile stretch of Chaco Wash fourteen planned towns with common architectural design and style - Great Houses - anchored the Chaco hub. The greatest of these Great Houses and one of the largest pueblos in the Southwest is Pueblo Bonito, considered the finest example of Anasazi masonry and architecture.
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Pueblo Bonito, or "pretty village" in Spanish, is the largest and most famous ruin in Chaco Canyon and is a good example of how the Anasazi lived.. Its Navajo name, tse biyaa anii'ahi , means "leaning rock gap" and refers to a sheet of rock that separated from the cliff wall behind it.
The oldest part of Pueblo Bonito dates back to about 850 AD. This earliest section consisted of 100 rooms ranging from one story rooms up to three story rooms. There were also 5 kivas surrounded by the multi-story rooms in a crescent shape. The location of Pueblo Bonito was unusual because they built it under a separated piece of a cliff wall. This piece was called “Threatening Rock,” standing 97 feet high and weighing about 30,000 tons.
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Pueblo Bonito reached five stories in height along its back wall and may have contained as many as 800 rooms. The rooms surrounded a central plaza, and throughout the settlement were a number of kivas, meeting places that served a ceremonial purpose. The total population of Pueblo Bonito was probably around 1,200 people at its height. During later constuction some of the lower level rooms were filled with trash to better support the upper levels. At its peak in the late 1000's as many as 600 rooms may have been in use.
Behind Pueblo Bonito is a series of petroglyphs depicting six-toed feet made in the late 900s or early 1000s. Although the meaning is unknown, extra digit appendages can be found on other Anasazi rock art as well.
By the middle of the 12th century, possibly as a result of some combination of drought, overpopulation, depleted resources and discredited political and religious leadership, the Chaco Phenomenon collapsed. The population scattered, probably in a series of migrations. Near the end, one remnant, perhaps social elites, moved 65 miles northward to build one last "magnificent pueblo great house" on the banks of Animas River, a few miles below the Colorado border. Called "Aztec" by early EuroAmerican settlers, who thought that the indigenous Indians could never have built so elaborate a community, it, too, would fail. The residents left.
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