Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States.
The Pecos Classification is a chronological division of all known Ancestral Puebloans into periods based on changes in architecture, art, pottery, and cultural remains. The original classification dates back to consensus reached at a 1927 archæological conference held in Pecos, New Mexico, which was organized by the United States archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder.
A kiva is a space used by Puebloans for rites and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, "kiva" means a large room that is circular and underground, and used for spiritual ceremonies.
Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in the American Southwest hosting a concentration of pueblos. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a remote canyon cut by the Chaco Wash. Containing the most sweeping collection of ancient ruins north of Mexico, the park preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian cultural and historical areas in the United States.
Pueblo Bonito is the largest and best-known great house in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, northern New Mexico. It was built by the Ancestral Puebloans who occupied the structure between AD 828 and 1126.
Chimney Rock National Monument is a 4,726-acre (1,913 ha) U.S. National Monument in San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado which includes an archaeological site. This area is located in Archuleta County, Colorado, between Durango and Pagosa Springs, and is managed for archaeological protection, public interpretation, and education. The Chimney Rock Archaeological Site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970. U.S. President Barack Obama created Chimney Rock National Monument by proclamation on September 21, 2012 under authority of the Antiquities Act.
Salmon Ruins is an ancient Chacoan and Pueblo site located in the northwest corner of New Mexico, USA. Salmon was constructed by migrants from Chaco Canyon around 1090 CE, with 275 to 300 original rooms spread across three stories, an elevated tower kiva in its central portion, and a great kiva in its plaza. Subsequent use by local Middle San Juan people resulted in extensive modifications to the original building, with the reuse of hundreds of rooms, division of many of the original large, Chacoan rooms into smaller rooms, and emplacement of more than 20 small kivas into pueblo rooms and plaza areas. The site was occupied by ancient Ancestral Puebloans until the 1280s, when much of the site was destroyed by fire and abandoned. The pueblo is situated on the north bank of the San Juan River, just to the west of the modern town of Bloomfield, New Mexico, and about 45 miles (72 km) north of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. The site was built on the first alluvial terrace above the San Juan River floodplain.
A Timeline of Chacoan history includes Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Twin Angels Pueblo, Casamero Pueblo, Kin Nizhoni, Pierre's Site, and Halfway House.
Tsin Kletsin or Tsin Kletzin is an Ancestral Puebloan great house and archaeological site located on top of South Mesa in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, northwestern New Mexico, United States. It is located 3.2 kilometers south of Pueblo Bonito. Tree-ring dating placed the construction around 1110-1115 A.D. Originally it contained 81 rooms, 3 kivas and a plaza constructed to create a 2-story structure. The plaza was enclosed by a wall, and a 1-meter-wide entry portal allowed access to the plaza from the south. The masonry style of this complex is called McElmo (Chaco-McElmo), characterized by large sandstone blocks and some tubular slabs. Some 800 meters north-east from Tsin Kletsin there is Weritos Dam. Its alleged role was to retain the storm water runoff in a reservoir that archaeologists Lagasse, Gillespie and Eggert suggest provided Tsin Kletsin with all of its domestic water. However, massive amounts of silt accumulated during flash floods would have forced the residents to regularly rebuild the dam and dredge the drainage channel, and perhaps as early as every 2 years the water might have overflown the dam causing some flooding.
Kin Kletso is a Chacoan Ancestral Pueblo great house and notable archaeological site located in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Nageezi, New Mexico, United States. It was a medium-sized great house located 0.5 miles (0.8 km) west of Pueblo Bonito; it shows strong evidence of construction and occupation by Pueblo peoples who migrated to Chaco from the northern San Juan Basin in the time period of 1125 to 1200. From its masonry work, rectangular shape and design Kletso is identified as Pueblo III architecture by prominent Chaco archaeologists Stephen H. Lekson and Tom Windes. They also argue that this great house was only occupied by one or two households. Fagen writes that Kletso contained around 55 rooms, four ground-floor kivas, and a two-story cylindrical tower that may have functioned as a kiva or religious center. Evidence of an obsidian production industry were discovered here. The house was erected between 1125 and 1130.
Casa Chiquita is an Ancestral Puebloan great house and archaeological site located in Chaco Canyon, northwestern New Mexico, United States.
Chetro Ketl is an Ancestral Puebloan great house and archeological site located in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico, United States. Construction on Chetro Ketl began c. 990 and was largely complete by 1075, with significant remodeling occurring in the early and mid-1110s. Following the onset of a severe drought, most Chacoans emigrated from the canyon by 1140; by 1250 Chetro Ketl's last inhabitants had vacated the structure.
Pueblo del Arroyo is an Ancestral Puebloan great house and archaeological site located in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, in New Mexico, United States.
Hundreds of Ancestral Puebloan dwellings are found across the American Southwest. With almost all constructed well before 1492 CE, these Puebloan towns and villages are located throughout the geography of the Southwest.
The Pueblo I Period was the first period in which Ancestral Puebloans began living in pueblo structures and realized an evolution in architecture, artistic expression, and water conservation.
The Pueblo II Period was the second pueblo period of the Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners region of the American southwest. During this period people lived in dwellings made of stone and mortar, enjoyed communal activities in kivas, built towers and dams for water conservation, and implemented milling bins for processing maize. Communities with low-yield farms traded pottery with other settlements for maize.
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. They are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara tradition, which developed from the Picosa culture. The people and their archaeological culture are often referred to as Anasazi, meaning "ancient enemies", as they were called by Navajo. Contemporary Puebloans object to the use of this term, with some viewing it as derogatory.
Kin Ya'a is a Chacoan great house and the center of a significant Ancestral Puebloan outlier community. It is located near Crownpoint, New Mexico on the Dutton Plateau, 25 miles (40 km) south of Chaco Canyon.
McElmo Phase refers to a period in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, when drastic changes in ceramics and masonry techniques in Chaco Canyon appeared. During this period the Ancestral Puebloans living in the canyon started using painted black-on-white pottery versus their standard grey ware, and the masonry and layout of great houses built during the McElmo phase, which was the last major construction era in the canyon, differ significantly from those built during the early parts of the Bonito Phase, which overlaps with the McElmo Phase. Archeologists initially suggested that the McElmo influence was brought to Chaco Canyon by immigrants from Mesa Verde, but subsequent research suggests that the developments were of local origin. Archeologist R. Gwinn Vivian notes, "The jury is still out on this question, a problem that poses intriguing possibilities for future work."
