Chapter 7 - American SW

Ancestral Pueblo

• Refers to Native American groups who occupied southeastern Utah, southwestern Colorado, northern Arizona, and northwestern New Mexico from 500 cal BC to 1540 AD
• Descendants live in Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico

Regional Sites

• Aztec Ruins: an Ancestral Pueblo region in northern New Mexico with many great houses
• Casa Grande: a Classic period Hohokam site in Arizona with a great house, residential compounds, and platform mounds
• Casa Rinconada: a great kiva built in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico during the late Bonito phase
• Casas Grandes: a large Pueblo IV settlement in northern Mexico with evidence of trade and exchange into the Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, and other North American Southwest regions
• Cave 7: a Basketmaker II burial cave site in southeastern Utah
• Santa Cruz Bend: a Late Archaic period site in Tucson, Arizona, with evidence of early maize, wild plants, and hunting of animals
• Shabik'eschee Village: a Basketmaker III occupation in the Chaco Canyon area, New Mexico, with 25 excavated pithouses, including a great kiva, and more than 50 storage pits
• Snaketown: a large Hohokam settlement in central Arizona near Phoenix with numerous individual pit structures, two ball courts, and evidence of the early use of maize

The Southwest

• Geographical region of southwest Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and southeast Utah
• Point where these four modern US states come together is called the “Four Corners”
• Human occupation of the Southwest extends from Clovis culture to large settled communities and complex social organization

Basketmaker II (BM II)

• Habitation sites often located in rockshelters and pithouses
• People relied on runoff water for floodwater farming and rainwater-dependent dry farming
• Slab-lined cists and bell-shape pits were used for storage, human burials, and other purposes
• By AD 200, there is evidence for limited use of pottery
• Diet consisted of 80-90% maize, with the addition of beans around 590 cal BC
• People produced a variety of coiled basket types, with differences in technique or style reflecting different cultural groups
• Burials indicate occasional violent raids and differences in achieved social status

Chaco Canyon

• At its peak during the Bonito Phase, around 2000-3000 people may have lived in and around the canyon
• People had ingenious ways of capturing and controlling rainwater, including check dams, dams, channels, and stone-lined canals
• Great houses, such as Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, and Pueblo Alto, were large multistory roomblock clusters
• 373 miles of roads led into Chaco Canyon, creating a physical and symbolic link between the heart of the canyon and outlying communities
• There is debate about whether Chacoan outliers were politically and socially reliant on Chaco or more independent settlements modeled after Chaco

Social Life in Chaco Canyon

• Questions about the distribution of social, political, and ritual power among the great houses of Chaco Canyon and outlying communities
• Pottery motifs shared between Chaco and outliers demonstrate cultural affinity, but little about the nature of the relationship
• Maintenance of Chaco's lifeway required coordinated labor, such as irrigation of crops and harvesting of timber
• Tree-ring evidence shows that most wood was harvested in late spring and early summer, processed, and then stored until it was needed
• Researchers suggest that wood-harvesting task groups were comprised of males and field preparation and planting were completed by females
• Bioarchaeological evidence supports the conclusion that people who lived in great houses had access to a greater variety of and higher quality food—likely an indication of elite status