Ancestral Puebloans

The Ancestral Puebloans were a Native American culture of the Four Corners region of the south-western United States, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. Between about 100 and 1600 CE, they built multi-storey stone and adobe villages, great houses and cliff dwellings, such as those at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. They are the ancestors of the modern Pueblo peoples, such as the Hopi, Zuni and the Rio Grande Pueblos.

They were formerly often called the Anasazi, a Navajo word sometimes translated as "ancestors of the enemies", which modern Pueblo peoples prefer not to use. Archaeologists now use the term Ancestral Puebloans.

The early phases of the culture, from around 1500 BCE to 750 CE, are called the Basketmaker periods, after the fine baskets they made. People grew maize and squash, which had spread from Mexico, and later beans, hunted and gathered wild plants. They lived in pithouses, partly underground houses. They adopted the bow and arrow and pottery.

From around 750 CE, they began building above-ground houses of stone and adobe, with connected rooms, called pueblos by the Spanish, from the word for village. Pithouses developed into kivas, round underground ceremonial rooms entered by a ladder through the roof, still used by Pueblo peoples today.

Between about 850 and 1150, Chaco Canyon, in north-western New Mexico, became a major centre. Its people built great houses, such as Pueblo Bonito, which had about 600 to 800 rooms, several storeys high, and many kivas, including great kivas. Wood for construction was carried from mountains up to 80 kilometres away. A network of straight roads radiated from Chaco to outlying communities. Chaco imported turquoise, shells, copper bells and macaws from Mexico, and cacao, showing long-distance trade. Some buildings are aligned with the sun and moon. Archaeologists debate whether Chaco was a residential town, a ceremonial and pilgrimage centre or a political capital.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, people at Mesa Verde, in south-western Colorado, built villages in alcoves of cliffs, such as Cliff Palace, with about 150 rooms and 23 kivas. Many people farmed on the mesa tops. Cliff dwellings were also built at sites such as Canyon de Chelly and Kayenta, in Arizona.

In the late thirteenth century, the Ancestral Puebloans left the Four Corners region. Tree-ring dating shows a long drought from 1276 to 1299. Other causes may have included environmental degradation, population pressure, conflict and social and religious changes. People migrated south and east to the Rio Grande valley, the Hopi mesas and Zuni, where their descendants live today.

Spanish colonists arrived in 1598. In the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the Pueblo peoples drove the Spanish out for twelve years. Chaco Culture and Mesa Verde are World Heritage Sites. Pueblo peoples consider these places ancestral homes, still connected to their communities.

Our maps from 800 to 1300 show North America in the period when the great houses of Chaco and the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde were built.