In 1888, two men, Charles Mason and Richard Wetherhill, found courts, passageways and rooms “deep with rubble of fallen walls and collapsed roofs” while searching for lost cattle in southwestern Colorado. These ruins, later named Cliff Palace, as well as many other surrounding ruins are the ancient home of the Anasazi. Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning “ancient ones,” and they are characterized as “hunters and gatherers, basket makers, [and] cliff dwellers”. These people abandoned their cliff dwellings and disappeared mysteriously by the year AD 1300. Fortunately, enough can be deduced by the remains left by the Anasazi that a somewhat clear picture can be drawn about their way of life while they inhabited the cliff dwellings in the Mesa Verde.

The Anasazi people arrived in the Mesa Verde about 2000 years, descendents of the even more ancient people who crossed the Bering Straight from Asia. They are short, stocky people, averaging 5 feet 2 inches in height with dark eyes, dark hair, dark skin, and some have “slanting Mongoloid eyes”. Another distinct physical characteristic of the Anasazi is that their skulls are flattened in the back due to hard cradle boards while being babies. They are a matrilineal society and “property also belongs to the woman”. They also practice clan exogamy. In summer, “women wear small aprons of dangling yucca fiber while the men may wear loin-cloths of buckskin or cotton cloth” and in winter both sexes “wear cotton cloth, feather blankets and buckskin robes”.

There are four main categories, or periods, which signify the different developments of the Anasazi. The first category is the “Basket Maker Period,” which lasts from AD 1 to AD 450. The people in this period were excellent weavers and are the “earliest known farmers in the Mesa Verde area”. Little evidence survives of these people, but by looking at ninety graves, most of which are in caves, it is obvious that they do not know how to make pottery at this time, since no pottery is found at all. They are semi-nomadic and along with pottery, they do not have bows and arrows or permanent houses. Their weapon of choice is the atlatl, and other common tools are “wooden planting sticks and scoops; stone knives, scrapers, drills and pipes; bone awls and whistles”. They also used a milling stone, which was a “slab of stone with a shallow trough on the top surface”.

It is very interesting how much information can be gathered by the mummies of the people from the Basket Maker Period. The hair of the women mummies is usually “cropped short but the male mummies sometimes exhibit elaborate hair styling”. Also, “on some a wide line was shaved down the center of the head and the remaining hair was done up in a number of large and small braids”. Although these are bodies specially prepared after death, this may still be how the Basket Makers styled their hair while living. These reason these bodies cannot be taken as exact representations of the living is because there is evidence of special preparations. Articles the deceased had used and “articles his spirit would need in the afterworld” were found in the graves. The bodies are also laid out in a certain way. The “bodies [are] flexed, with the arms and legs drawn up against the chest”. The bodies are also wrapped in blankets and sometimes the whole body, with the blanket, is “placed in a large woven bag”. The care that the Basket Makers take to bury their dead helped to preserve the bodies, which helps anthropologists greatly today.

The following period is known as the “Modified Basket Maker Period,” which lasts from AD 450 to AD 750. During this time the Anasazi learn how to make pottery from people living in the south “where other tribes had been making it prior to its arrival in the Mesa Verde region”. They also begin to build houses upon the mesa tops and use the bow and arrow, as well as stone mauls and axes. The houses are called “pit houses,” because half was below and half was above the ground. Sipapus also are being used at this time, the definition of which will be explained later.

The next period is called the “Developmental Pueblo Period”. This period lasts from AD 750 to AD 1100 and is when the hard cradle board is introduced. Why they switch from a soft cradle board to a hard one no one knows, but from this period on, they Anasazi are characterized by their flat skulls. Another significant change in this period is that the quality of the pottery is superior to baskets for the first time among the Anasazi. Farming improves and common crops include corn, beans and squash. The Anasazi during this period “traded for seashells, turquoise, cotton and salt”, all of which are highly valued commodities. It is during this time that the pit houses move completely underground and become the kivas, which are used primarily for religious purposes.

The last period is known as the “Great, or Classic Pueblo Period,” and lasts from AD 1100 to AD 1300. The villages in this period are characterized by “massive stone walls” and “tall round towers [come] into use". Halfway through this period, the people left the mesa tops and began to build the cliff dwellings, for which the Anasazi are famous. The scale and complexity of the structures they construct are not seen again “in the United States until the 1870s” and how the Anasazi did this without a system of writing, horses, wheels or metals is astonishing. Women, during this period, specialize in many different types of pottery and the “level of craftsmanship in masonry, pottery, weaving and jewelry rose markedly”. Other advances are the widespread use of colorfully decorated cotton cloth and jewelry made from “turquoise, shell, bone and other materials”.

There are many theories as to how and why the Anasazi disappeared. One guess is that there was “an extended drought from 1271 to 1299” and so they were not able to obtain a sufficient amount of food to sustain them in the area. Another theory is that the Anasazi over-exploited the land and “exhausted the soil, the forests, and the animal supply. Overcrowding also may be an issue, since the closer people are, the faster diseases spread. The most widespread theory is that an enemy pressured them “first into the caves and then, when the threat became unbearable, ultimately to flee altogether”. The presence of so many belongings left in the homes makes it seem that they were definitely thinking of returning after whatever made them leave had passed.

When Cliff Palace was discovered, Charles Mason found it odd that so many valuables were left behind, hidden under “the clay of which the roofs and upper floors were made”. Upon further investigation of the site, Mason also noticed that there were human bones everywhere, which leads one to believe that they were indeed run out by enemies. At each end of the cave, in which Cliff Palace sits, there is a trail that leads up to the fields on the mesa top. There is another trial that leads to the bottom of the canyon below the cave. Walking up and down these trails everyday must have been rough, but supposedly worth the effort because of the protection the caves provided. Cliff Palace housed over four-hundred people at its height, which easily made it the largest center of the Anasazi population.

Long House is the second most famous Anasazi dwelling in the Mesa Verde. However, the grandeur of Long House is diminished due to the carelessness of early explorers. Long House probably rivaled Cliff Palace in its height. It is impossible to tell exactly how many rooms Long House contained because of its horrible condition, but fifteen kivas have been identified. Archaeologists can tell that Long House “was once full of high structures” by the “study of foundations, broken bits of masonry and the outlines of rooms on the cave walls”.

The cliff dwellings of the Anasazi have many similar characteristics, which is why many anthropologists and archaeologists believe that all of these structures were created by a single tribal group. The doors of the structures seem to be very small compared to today’s standards. The doors are rectangular and are an average size of 25 inches high and 16 inches wide. They doors are also usually placed two or three feet above the floor. Another type of door is structured in the shape of a “T”. These are less common, but seem more practical since “if the hands are placed no the two ledges it is quite easy to fold the legs and swing through the opening”. The doors are closed with “thin sandstone slabs,” which are held in place by “a small stick set into the masonry under the lintel”. So, although the doors are small, it is evident that the Anasazi did value their privacy in the crowded village.

The walls are often plastered with clay of varying colors and “small built-in shelves are very common on the inside walls of the rooms. Typical masonry is “made of rather large, well shaped stones, set in thick layers of adobe mortar”. To make the masonry sturdier “small stones, or spalls, [are] forced into the mortar to compact it in the joint”. The walls of the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings are “surprisingly smooth” and have “clean sharp lines,” which shows the level of craftsmanship of these early American people.

The roofs of the buildings are “constructed of poles and adobe”. The adobe was from three to five inches thick and was “smooth and hard”. The poles vary in size and are used as support for the roof; usually “one or two heavy timbers spanned the room”. For additional support, “smaller poles [are] placed at right angles to the heavy joists and were in turn covered with a solid layer of slender withes or split poles.

Square towers, two to four stories tall, are common in the cliff dwellings. However, instead of being for defensive purposes, these towers are like apartments, since the limited space of the caves offered little room for expansion length-wise. Round towers are less common, but are still found and “the faces of all the stones are curved to fit the circular shape,” which again shows the skilled craftsmanship of these people. These towers have balconies, or platforms, connecting the upper floors of the towers with each other. The sight of these tall towers with platforms connecting the upper floors must have been an amazing sight when they were constructed.

Kivas serve as the “real living space” of the villages. The kivas are used primarily by the men and serve as “combination ceremonial rooms, club rooms, council chambers and workshops”. The kivas are located underground, as mentioned before, and were usually “circular or roughly circular in shape”. Kivas are completely covered by a roof made of log and adobe, just as the other buildings in the village, except for a small opening in the center for entrance. The roof is build to be extra strong, using many logs, which form a dome. The roof has to be strong because the surface forms a large open court, which is where most of the daily activities take place. In the center of the floor, next to the fire pit, is the sipapu, which “serves as a symbolic entrance to the Mother Earth”.

The Anasazi have held my interested ever since I visited Mesa Verde National Park in 1997. The structures they built are just amazing. I wonder how they were able to carry the supplies needed to construct the buildings up to the caves, especially since they did not have horses to carry the burdens. If these people had kept on living as they had in the 14th century, then who knows how advanced they would be today. Of all the Native American villages I have visited, these cliff dwellings are truly the most spectacular and intriguing.