The life of these ancestral farmers was a primitive one, even by the standards which prevailed in Frijoles Canyon 1,000 years later. For one thing, no permanent dwellings appear to have been constructed until late in Basketmaker times, and even then dwellings were of crude pithouse type—an excavation some 3 feet into the ground, walled up and roofed with logs, brush, and earth. Further, the bow and arrow was not used by these people until perhaps A. D. 600; the early weapon of hunting and warfare was the spear and spear-thrower (atlatl). For the greater part of Basketmaker times, pottery was unknown; only after A. D. 400 was true fired pottery introduced in the northern Southwest.

Typical prehistoric pottery vessels made in the Bandelier vicinity.
Photo courtesy Museum of New Mexico.

The production of decorated pottery late in Basketmaker times began a development which has had the greatest archeological significance. The long-enduring fragments of painted pottery found in subsequent housesites have been a principal tool by which students have pieced together the relative chronology of ruins and the migrations of the pottery-makers.

With successive introduction of pottery, the bow and arrow, and other new traits in the approximate period A. D. 450 to 750, the character of Basketmaker life became so modified that a new name—the Pueblos—was applied to the subsequent peoples. Presently they began to move from the Basketmaker pithouse into masonry chambers above ground, perhaps with several rooms connected, the old pithouse surviving in use as the ceremonial kiva. Cotton came under cultivation and was woven into garments. Hoes and axes of stone with serviceable handles came into use. Turkeys and dogs were by this time commonly domesticated, the former being valued primarily for feathers which served to make warm robes and ceremonial garb.

BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT, NEW MEXICO
[High-resolution Map]

The useful yucca plant.

GREAT PUEBLO PERIOD.