Moon House (sometimes written as Moonhouse) is a Pueblo III-period cliff dwelling located in southeastern Utah on Cedar Mesa in Bears Ears National Monument. It was created by the Ancestral Puebloan peoples between 1150 and 1300.
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Moon House (sometimes written as Moonhouse) is a Pueblo III-period cliff dwelling located in southeastern Utah on Cedar Mesa in Bears Ears National Monument. It was created by the Ancestral Puebloan peoples between 1150 and 1300.
3 sections of the Moon House complex are identified by Bloomer (1989 [1] ); M-1, M-2, and M-3. These are discussed briefly. Structures from the M-1 cluster yield tree-ring dates from between 964 and 1267, with most rooms clustering between 1125 and 1250. Structures from the M-2 cluster date from between 1109 and 1268. Structures in the M-3 cluster date from between 1044 and 1266, with most dates between 1150 and 1255.
Both Dean and Bloomer postulate different rooms served different functions, [2] and each section of the Moon House complex had a different function. M-1 seems to represent a residential area, with approximately 5 households, while M-2 primarily functioned as a storage area and M-3 as a ceremonial unit dominated by a large kiva. Bloomer found no other kivas within the canyon where Moon House is located, indicating that perhaps Moon House served as a local ceremonial center, servicing the ceremonial needs of the residents nearby in the canyon as well as possibly from the mesa tops.
Moon House derives its name from the unique pictographs located within Room I within the M-1 cluster.
In recent years, debate has arisen among hikers that visit the southwest over the location of Moon House. Some hikers have argued that its location, being on public land, should be available to the public. The Bureau of Land Management and some professional archaeologists disagree with this. In recent years, the USGS has removed Moon House, among other ancient ruins, from its 7.5 minute topographical maps. [3]
In 2011, the BLM Monticello Field Office created the Moon House Recreation Management Zone, limiting visitation to 20 people per day (no pets). [4] This is in response to the rising visitation to Moon House and resultant damage. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
Moon House is featured in David Robert's 1996 book "In Search of the Old Ones." [5]
A.G. Deiss sets a portion of her 2003 novel "The Sullivan Girls and the Mystery of Moonhouse" at Moon House. She also adds Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch into the history of Moon House, [6] though there is no evidence that he actually visited the ruin.
Craig Childs talks briefly about Moon House in his book "House of Rain." [7]
The 2009 book "The Marauders" by Rob Gay centers around Moon House and the controversy surrounding publication of its location. [8]
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.
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 people, kivas are a large room that is circular and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies.
Bandelier National Monument is a 33,677-acre (13,629 ha) United States National Monument near Los Alamos in Sandoval and Los Alamos counties, New Mexico. The monument preserves the homes and territory of the Ancestral Puebloans of a later era in the Southwest. Most of the pueblo structures date to two eras, dating between 1150 and 1600 AD.
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.
Hovenweep National Monument is located on land in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, between Cortez, Colorado and Blanding, Utah on the Cajon Mesa of the Great Sage Plain. Shallow tributaries run through the wide and deep canyons into the San Juan River.
Navajo National Monument is a National Monument located within the northwest portion of the Navajo Nation territory in northern Arizona, which was established to preserve three well-preserved cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloan people: Keet Seel, Betatakin, and Inscription House. The monument is high on the Shonto plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system, west of Kayenta, Arizona. It features a visitor center with a museum, three short self-guided trails, two small campgrounds, and a picnic area.
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Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically-significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U.S. state of Colorado. The monument's 176,056 acres (71,247 ha) are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, as directed in the Presidential proclamation which created the site on June 9, 2000. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. This system comprises 32 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management to conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes recognized for their outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2005, over 6,000 individual archeological sites had been identified within the monument.
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.
The Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum located in Dolores, Colorado, is an archaeological museum of Native American pueblo and hunter-gatherer cultures. Two 12th-century archaeological sites, the Escalante and Dominguez Pueblos, at the center were once home to Ancient Pueblo peoples. The museum's permanent and special exhibits display some of the 3 million mostly Ancestral Puebloan artifacts curated at the facility. The center also houses a public research library, educational resources and a museum shop. Wheelchair-accessible facilities include a picnic area and an interpreted nature and cultural trail.
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.
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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 water conversing dams, and implemented milling bins for processing maize. Communities with low-yield farms traded pottery with other settlements for maize.
The Pueblo III Period was the third period, also called the "Great Pueblo period" when Ancestral Puebloans lived in large cliff-dwelling, multi-storied pueblo, or cliff-side talus house communities. By the end of the period, the ancient people of the Four Corners region migrated south into larger, centralized pueblos in central and southern Arizona and New Mexico.
Recapture Canyon is a canyon along Recapture Creek east of Blanding, San Juan County, Utah, United States. It is an archaeological site, and is located on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management closed it to motorized vehicles in 2007 due to damage caused by illegal trail construction.
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.