In their interpretations of the past, archeologists do not always agree with one another. There is no reason why they should. The evidence is always incomplete and often difficult to understand....
About The People...
Archeologists call the prehistoric Indians of the Mesa Verde “Anasazi.” Anasazi peoples once lived over a vast area of the northern Southwest, from the Four Corners to southern Nevada. The Anasazi were descended from nomadic hunting and gathering peoples who occupied the Southwest several thousand years before the time of Christ. Food plants, originally domesticated in Mexico, spread to the Southwest through trade. People were then able to produce food as well as collect it. Although the Anasazi raised crops of corn, beans, and squash, such foods probably made up only about half their diet. The people still relied on the hunting and gathering skills passed down from their ancestors. The Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico are the descendants of the Anasazi. Despite four centuries of contact—and sometimes conflict—with European culture, today’s Pueblos carry on much of the way of life the Anasazi developed over the centuries. The Anasazi heritage lives on.
Living in the Ground:
Modified Basketmaker Pithouse (AD 650)
By the late 500s, the Anasazi had settled on various parts of the Mesa Verde. The people lived in pithouses clustered in villages. These also included groups of small above-ground storage rooms built of jacal (mud-plastered posts).
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Pithouses were structures with their floors and lower walls below ground surface. Large posts set into holes in the floor supported a flat roof and sloping sidewalls of poles, juniper bark, sage, and plaster. The sidewalls rested on the low bench around the inside of the pit, where impressions of the poles can still be seen.
Pithouse floor plans of this period resembled a figure-eight. The large room was the living and sleeping area. It was equipped with a firepit or hearth, usually located near the center.