Habitation sites of these gatherers are distributed in open situations and in shelter caves. Such sites are commonly marked by milling stones that characterize the preparation of wild foods ([fig. 3]), hearths, chopping and scraping implements, and stemmed projectile points markedly different from those used by the Early Hunters. These points were affixed to dart shafts that were propelled with a spear thrower or atlatl, a device that preceded the bow and arrow in America but is still used by Australian Aborigines.
Seasonal changes in the local availability of wild foods must have necessitated a nomadic or seminomadic way of life. The development of agricultural techniques in the later years before the beginning of the Christian Era, however, probably contributed to the development of a semisedentary existence that was eventually to lead to the village life of the later periods. The exact time of introduction of the principal agricultural crops, corn, squash, and beans, is unknown, but evidence from west-central New Mexico indicates their use by the Cochise people by 2500 B.C.
PUEBLOAN FARMERS
Having acquired the techniques of deliberately planting and raising food crops that could be stored against future needs, local populations of Hunters and Gatherers became less dependent upon the gathering of wild foods and began to construct clusters of more permanent dwellings near cultivable land. Among the earliest recognized houses of this period are the semisubterranean pit houses of the early Mogollon people in the San Francisco River drainage of west-central New Mexico ([fig. 4]) and of the Anasazi Basketmakers in the San Juan River drainage of northwestern New Mexico. These cultural advances, together with the acquisition of techniques for the manufacture of fired pottery, foreshadowed the development of the Mogollon and Pueblo cultures at a time beginning perhaps as early as 300 B.C. for the Mogollon area and at least by 1 A.D. for the Anasazi area.
Figure 3. Milling stones of the type used by the Cochise People
Plant foods were ground in a shallow basin metate with the small one-hand mano (hand stone). Socorro, New Mexico.
These two cultural groups, the Mogollon in southwestern and southern New Mexico, whose roots extend back through the ancestral Cochise to before 6000 B.C., and the Anasazi in the Four Corners region of northwestern New Mexico, probably developed independently during the early years. From about 500 A.D., however, there is increasing evidence of trade relationships and eventual fusion of traits. Other groups to the west, such as the Hohokam of Arizona, were sources of cultural influence on the indigenous people of New Mexico. In the Mogollon and San Juan Anasazi heartlands and in the Rio Grande Valley of central New Mexico, a pattern of village life with elaboration of social and religious organization emerged from the relatively simple cultures of the early years. Villages began to assume organized form, dwellings were combined in rows of adobe and stone structures containing a number of contiguous rooms, and subterranean ceremonial chambers or kivas assumed larger and more specialized architectural distinctiveness from the ancestral pit-house dwellings. In the Mogollon area, the characteristic brownware pottery of the Mogollons was used side by side with decorated black-on-white pottery of Anasazi origin. The bow and arrow slowly replaced the less efficient atlatl and dart. The significance of these early stages in the evolution of the Pueblo Culture in the San Juan and upper Rio Grande areas is indicated by their designation as the Developmental Pueblo period (Pueblo I and II).
(Photograph of museum diorama courtesy of the Chicago Natural History Museum)
Figure 4. Mogollon pit-house village of the period 200 B.C.
The climax of these developments occurred in the interval between 1050 and 1300 A.D. in the Classic or Great Pueblo period (Pueblo III). Among the most impressive manifestations of this period are large stone-masonry apartment houses, some rising to five stories in height and housing hundreds of people. Dwellings of this type are highlights of several well-known tourist attractions, among which are the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado and the monumental ruins of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon ([fig. 5]), both products of the ingenuity of the Anasazi Indians.