Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for Anasazi:

Anasazi: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A major cultural tradition of canyon dwellers found in southwestern United States between 100-1600 AD -- mainly in the four corners area of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, southeastern Utah, and southwestern Colorado. These Native Americans began settlements with the cultivation of maize. Pottery was unknown at the beginning, but basketry was well developed, hence the name Basket Maker" is given to these early stages. By the sixth century there were large villages of pit houses with farming and pottery and it evolved into the full Anasazi tradition. The first pueblos and kivas were constructed and fine painted pottery made. The next few centuries (the Pueblo I-III periods) were a time of expansion during which some of the most famous towns were founded (Chaco Canyon) and fine polychrome wares produced. At this time the Mogollon people to the south adopted the Anasazi way of life and their Hohokam neighbors were also influenced perhaps suggesting that the Anasazi actually migrated to these areas. In such an arid environment farming was always vulnerable to fluctuations in climate and rainfall and these factors caused considerable population movement and relocation of settlements during 11th-13th centuries with the virtual abandonment of Chaco Canyon in 1150 and the plateau heartland by 1300. From 1300 until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century the Anasazi culture and population dwindled and the homeland in northern Arizona was abandoned. Then with the encroachment of nomadic Apache and Navajo tribes and with the arrival of Europeans from the south and east Anasazi territory decreased further. However some pueblos have continued to be occupied until the present day. The generally accepted chronological framework of three Basketmaker and five Pueblo stages was first proposed at the 1927 Pecos Conference. Although exact links are uncertain it is clear that modern Pueblo Indian people are descended from Anasazi ancestors. The name Anasazi is derived from a Navajo word meaning "enemy ancestors" or "early ancestors" or "old people"."
Basket Maker: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Basketmakers
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Two early chronological periods of the early Puebloans or Anasazi -- 100-500 AD, followed by the Modified Basket Maker period, 500-700; They lived people in the Four Corners area (northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, southeastern Utah, and northeastern Arizona) of the U.S. The origin of the Basket Maker Indians is not known, but it is evident that when they first settled in the area they were already excellent basket weavers and that they were supplementing hunting and wild-seed gathering with the cultivation of maize and pumpkins. They lived either in caves or out in the open in shelters constructed of a masonry of poles and adobe mud. Both caves and houses contained special pits, often roofed over, that were used for food storage. The Basket Makers were among the first village agricultural societies in the Southwest. Three Basketmaker stages were recognized at the 1927 Pecos Conference of Southwesternists: Basketmaker I (hypothetical), Basketmaker II (1--450 AD) which was a large base camp and widely scattered seasonal camps where the preferred container was the basket, and Basketmaker III (450--700/750) in which there were small villages of pit houses in well-watered valley bottoms. Specialized structures such as wattle-and-daub storage bins and large rooms for communal activity (possibly early kivas) also began to occur more frequently in the latter stage.
Chaco Canyon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An alluvium-filled 20-km stretch of canyon in northwest New Mexico, occupied by the Anasazi during Pueblo I and II, c 850-1150 AD. Now a national park, it contained spectacular pueblos, including Pueblo Bonito (c 919-1130) which housed some 1,200 people. There were at least a dozen pueblo-like towns and hundreds of small villages. During a period of increased rainfall between 950-1150, several other pueblos were constructed in the Canyon, with fields, irrigation canals, an elaborate road system, and signal stations for long-distance trade. The entire complex of ruins has been studied with the aid of photogrammetry, including infrared air photography, satellite photographs, image enhancement, and computer mapping. When the climate started to become dryer, in c 1150, the main occupation of Chaco Canyon ended.
cliff dwelling: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The apartment houses" of masonry built by the Pueblo/Anasazi people of the American Southwest during Pueblo III times or Classic Pueblo located in rock shelters on the sides of canyon walls. These prehistoric houses were built along the sides or under the overhangs of cliffs primarily in the Four Corners area where the states of Arizona New Mexico Colorado and Utah meet. Mesa Verde National Park's Cliff Palace (CO) and Pueblo Bonito (NM) had about 200-800 rooms each. After this period the Pueblo/Anasazi moved farther south and built the pueblo villages that they still inhabit. When the ancestors of the Pueblo/Anasazi people became sedentary and began to cultivate corn they also began to build circular pits as storage bins. When the bins were later reinforced with stone walls and covered with roofs some people began to use the enclosures as houses. Their use of hand-hewn stone building blocks and adobe mortar was unexcelled even in later buildings. Ceilings were built by laying two or more large crossbeams and placing on them a solid line of laths made of smaller branches. The layers were then plastered over with the adobe mixture. Some of the structures were several stories high creating a row of terraces that gives the structure the appearance of a ziggurat (ancient Babylonian temple tower). The rooms were about 10 x 20 feet (3 by 6 meters). Ground-floor rooms were entered by ladder through a hole in the ceiling; rooms on upper floors could be entered both by doorways from adjoining rooms and by a hole in the ceiling. Each community had two or more kivas or ceremonial rooms. The Pueblo/Anasazi began to build these cliff dwellings around 1000 AD. The cliffs offered natural protection against attack and many smaller communities combined to form the large towns in the cliffs. Toward the end of the 13th century the cliff dwellings were deserted by the inhabitants. Two factors were involved: a severe drought between 1272- 1299 and possibly internal turmoil between tribes. Smaller pueblos were created in the south near better water sources."
Cliff Palace: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important site in Mesa Verde, Colorado, which was constructed by the Anasazi (Pueblo) in a large cliff overhang. It is a multi-story pueblo with more than 200 rooms and 23 kivas, abandoned at the end of the 13th century AD, along with the rest of Mesa Verde, after being occupied a very short time.
Fremont culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An agricultural Puebloan people found throughout much of present-day Utah between 400-1350 AD. There is some similarity to the Anasazi in pottery types and pithouse architecture. Hunting and gathering was most important, supplemented by the growing of maize, beans, and squash.
Hakataya: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Patayan
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A pottery-making tradition of the American Southwest which includes groups of regionally distinct cultures of the southwestern plateau and Colorado River basin, such as Cerbat, Prescott, Cohohina, and Sinagua. There is considerable disagreement about the real extent and cultural affiliations of the tradition and dates start around 500 AD. As with other Southwest traditions (e.g. Anasazi, Mogollon) the Hakataya is thought to have emerged from the Desert Tradition.
Hohokam: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tradition of southern Arizona which began as a sedentary farming culture around 300 BC and existed until 1400/1450 AD. It was a cultural unit within the Cochise subculture and it had large villages, canal irrigation, and pottery-making. The finest craft products were shell jewelry and objects of carved stone. Diagnostic traits include small villages of shallow, oblong pit-houses with no formalized community plan, cremation of the dead, plain grey or brown paddle and anvil smoothed pottery (or sometimes painted red on buff). The tradition is divided into: Pioneer (150-550 AD), Colonial (550-900 AD), Sedentary (900-1100 AD), Classic (1100-1450 AD), and Post-Classic (1450-1700 AD). Between 550-1200 AD, renewed Mexican contacts brought foreign elements to the Hohokam: courts for the ball-game, platform mounds, new types of maize, slab metates, mosaic mirrors, exotic symbolism from Mexican religion, and the use of copper bells. From about 1100, certain groups began to construct pueblos under Anasazi influence. After 1400/1450, the Hohokam territory along the Gila and Salt Rivers seems to have been partially abandoned. Their cultural heirs are the Pima and Papago Indians. Snaketown is an important Hohokam site.
Kayenta: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A regional variation of the Anasazi people, located in northeast Arizona, especially in the Pueblo II stage of c 1250-1300 AD. Kayenta has specific pottery types and architectural techniques. As seen at the Navajo National Monument, the principal dwellings of the Kayenta, the construction of the cliff dwellings was apparently the result of their evolution from hunters and gatherers to sedentary farmers. They probably moved to the mesas to the south because of climatic changes involving erosion and water shortages, which made farming impossible.
Mesa Verde: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large flat-topped mountain in southwest Colorado which was an area of Anasazi occupation beginning in c 600 AD. The structures are among the most spectacular in the American Southwest: cliff dwellings which are large Pueblo III multiroom apartment dwellings. The most famous is the Cliff Palace, comprised of 200 rooms and 23 kivas built of dressed stone blocks. The population rose steadily until 1200, after which date came decline and total abandonment of the area by c 1300.
Mimbres: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Regional variant of the Mogollon culture, centered in south-central New Mexico, and dated to 1000-1200 AD. The Mimbres people are particularly renowned for the black-on-white painted pottery bowls which they made especially to be put in burials. The pottery is decorated with abstract designs and with pictures of people, bears, rabbits, and other animals. Farmers grew maize and gathering beans and acorns; hunting deer, antelope, and rabbits. The culture also evidences a strong Anasazi influence.
Mogollon: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric civilization that existed from before 500 BC to approximately 1400 AD in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico in the Mogollon Highlands. Its roots lie in the Cochise version of the Desert Culture in this area, but the Mogollon folk were settled agriculturists who lived in villages of pit houses; they were also strongly influenced by the Anasazi and Hohokam. Evidence of maize and bean horticulture found at Bat Cave dates to earlier than 2000 BC, but unequivocally characteristic traits, such as plain brown pottery, do not appear until 300 BC. Although the tradition was agriculturally based, hunting and gathering continued to play some part in subsistence activities. Before c 1000 AD, typical communities were small villages of pit houses, located in easily defensible positions such as high mesas. Larger villages often included a communal assembly building (possibly early kiva) and sometimes fortifications. From c 1000 AD, the Mogollon people came under the influence of their northern neighbors, the Anasazi, and began to build pueblos. To this late period belongs some of the finest pottery of the American southwest, Mimbres ware, painted with stylized black animals on a white background. The culture is chronologically divided on the basis of architectural and pottery changes (Pine Lawn period, about 200 BC-AD 500; Georgetown period, 500-700; San Francisco period, 700-900; Three Circle period, 900-1050; and Mimbres period, 1050-1200). Unlike the Anasazi culture, the Mogollon culture did not survive as a recognizable group of modern Native Americans. Remnants of the Mogollon may have merged with Anasazi peoples to become what is known as the Western Pueblo people. The tradition has a number of regional variants: Mimbres, Pine Lawn, Upper Little Colorado, Forestdale, and Point of Pines.
Navajo: CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: Athabascan language group people of United States southwest. Their intrusion from Northwestern subarctic areas of Canada, c 900-1200 AD, helped bring about the abandonment of Pueblos in Anasazi subarea. They were probably aided by groups of Apache Indians, also Athabascans, moving into southwest at that time. The Navajo speak an Apachean language, which, like the language of their Apache cousins, is classified in the Athabascan family.
Oshara tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Southwestern Archaic tradition of the Four Corners region of southwestern U.S. It was an Archaic hunting and gathering culture from c 5500 BC to c 400 AD. There are five phases based on projectile point form, artifact assemblages, and socioeconomic organization. These phases are: Jay, c 5000-4800 BC, and Bajada, c 4800-3300 BC of the Early Archaic with nomadic bands of foragers and hunters; the San Jose Phase, c 3300-1800 BC; the Armijo Phase, c 1800-800 BC, with maize horticulture introduced; and the En Medio Phase, c 800 BC-400 AD, which encompassed the Basketmaker II Phase of the Anasazi culture.
Pecos classification: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A.V. Kidder's classification of Southwestern prehistory based on his Pecos excavation; a culture stage sequence devised at the first Pecos Conference of 1927 in an attempt to organize prehistoric material of the American Southwest. It is now restricted to the Anasazi tradition, including Basketmaker I-III and Pueblo I-V. Architecture and ceramics define the stages.
Pecos, New Mexico: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Anasazi pueblo in the American Southwest that was occupied for much of the past 2000 years. It provided the first stratigraphic sequence for American Southwest prehistory as a result of A.V. Kidder's excavations.
Picosa culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Archaic culture that began c 3000 BC in the American Southwest and is considered by some to be ancestral to the Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon traditions. It was located in southern California, southern Nevada, Arizona, and southwestern New Mexico, as well as the Four Corners region.
pilaster: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A rectangular column attached to a wall, partly embedded in it, with one-fourth or one-fifth of its thickness projecting. In classical architecture, a pilaster normally observes the form of one of the architectural orders, such as Ionic or Corinthian, and supports roof beams. The anta of ancient Greece was the direct ancestor of the Roman pilaster. In ancient Roman architecture the pilaster gradually became more and more decorative rather than structural. The fourth-story wall of the Colosseum in Rome contains examples of the Roman use of pilasters. These pillar-like structures were also in the inside walls of Anasazi kivas.
Pueblo Bonito: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Major Anasazi town (pueblo) located in Chaco Canyon National Monument, northwest New Mexico. Enclosed by high walls, it is a self-contained complex of some 800 contiguous rooms rising 4-5 stories (300 on the ground floor), with 32 kivas (two great kivas) and two large open plazas. Construction started in 919 (Pueblo II) and was completed in the latter half of the 11th century. The overall D-shaped plan, however, appears to have come about through accretion rather than deliberate planning. The sealing of some outside windows and entrance ways took place in Pueblo III, a period generally noted for the rise of defensive sites. Pueblo Bonito was abandoned by c 1200.
Pueblo or pueblo: CATEGORY: chronology; culture; structure
DEFINITION: In its capitalized form, a term for a stage in various chronologies of the American Southwest, typically spanning the time period from 700 AD to the 1700s and to a specific Native American group, culture, or site of this time. These Native Americans are believed to be the successors of the prehistoric Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon. The lowercased form is a term for village, applied to the sites in the American Southwest where Pueblo lived. Often these were apartment-like complexes of rectangular living rooms, built close together and often arranged in several stories or terraces, made of wattle and daub. This building style is especially associated with the Anasazi tradition. The chronological period followed the Basketmaker and was divided into five stages at the 1927 Pecos Conference: Pueblo I (700-850/900), Pueblo II (900-1100/1150), Pueblo III (1100/1150-1300), Pueblo IV (1300-1600), and Pueblo V (1600-1700s).
siapapu: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A small hole in the floor of the kiva, which served as the symbolic place of origin of the tribe for Puebloan/Anasazi peoples.

Another Dictionary Search