Types of prehistoric Southwestern architecture

American Antiquarian Society
J. WALTER FEWKES
Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for April, 1917.
WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A. PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY 1917
The Davis Press Worcester, Mass.
TYPES OF PREHISTORIC SOUTHWESTERN ARCHITECTURE
By J. Walter Fewkes
Among primitive peoples the calendar, sun worship and agriculture are closely connected. When man was just emerging from the hunting or fishing stages into early agricultural conditions it rarely happened that he replanted the same fields year after year, for it was early recognized that the land, however fertile, would not yield good crops in successive years but should lie fallow one or more years before replanting. The primitive agriculturist learned by experience that a change was necessary to insure good crops. To effect this change the agriculturist moved his habitation and planted on the sites where the soil was found to be fertile. There was thus a continual shifting of planting places which accounts in part for frequent migrations. In our Southwest this nomadic condition was succeeded by a stationary agricultural stage. Necessary water was supplied by irrigation which also contributed nourishment necessary for the enrichment of the soil. When an agricultural population is thus anchored to one locality, permanent, well-constructed habitations are built near farms that are tilled year after year.
The following ideas on the relation of agricultural people, the calendar and sun worship were practically adopted from Mr. E. J. Payne’s “History of the New World called America.”
It is obligatory for the agriculturist, especially when the country is arid, to have a reliable calendar; he must know the best time for planting that the seeds may germinate, the epoch when the rains are most abundant that the plants may grow, and the season when the hot sun may mature the growing corn. Agricultural life necessitates an exact calendar.
Several methods are used by the primitive agriculturist to determine the time for planting, the most reliable of which is the position of the sun and moon on the horizon rising or setting. The movements of the latter, especially the phases of the new moon, although important, do not serve as the best basis of the annual calendar. The time of the year cannot be told by observations of the moon. The phases of the moon play a certain rôle among agricultural people, since this planet takes a subordinate place in determining the calendar. The positions of the sun, or the points of its rising and setting on the horizon and its altitude at midday, afforded the primitive agriculturist data that could be relied upon from year to year to determine the season. The position of the sun at midsummer and midwinter, rising or setting, is associated with most important events; the winter solstice indicates the time when the fields should be prepared for cultivation; when the irrigating ditches should be cleared out and prepared for planting. We consequently find the winter solstice, which occurs at the close of December, is practically set aside by all agricultural people as an occasion of a great festival in which sun-worship is dominant. At this time we also find a complicated ceremony, the object of which is to draw back the sun and prepare the people for the work before them. Around this midwinter festival were crowded rites of the purification of the earth from evil influences of winter, a dramatic personation of the return of the sun god, preliminary to the call to the husbandman to begin his work. The planting itself occurs somewhat later, or when the sun reaches the vernal equinox, the determination of which is less important than the solstice.