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| Cliff Palace - a construction marvel |
Over the course of 700 years, Ancestral Puebloans evolved
from being hunter-gatherers to constructing elaborate stone buildings in
alcoves high up on a cliff face. They
left remnants of beautiful pottery, clothing made of turkey feathers, and elaborate
villages that suggests a sophisticated social life and rich spiritual
life. They left Mesa Verde at the end of
1200s, likely moving on to establish some of the Pueblos that exist still
today.
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| Remains of a Pit House with an anteroom, likely used for storage |
Mesa Verde is Spanish for “Green Table” and the mesa is
green with trees and shrubs growing on its sides and top. This must have attracted the early
people. Archeologists call people from this
early period Basketmakers, because of the baskets that they made, they had not
learned how to make pottery yet. They
farmed, hunted wild animals and foraged plants.
They lived in pit houses, dug into the earth with wooden roofs. We saw examples of these homes on the Mesa
Top Loop at the park.
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| Coyote Village pueblo construction |
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| Far View Tower |
Eventually, they started building above ground, and
innovated sharing walls between rooms of the building, the origin of what we
know today as pueblo construction. The
walls were thick with two sides of stone and rubble between them. The structures were sometimes built to be two or three
stories tall. They retained the concept
of the original pit houses, making them round kivas, places where men gathered to work
on their weapons, to weave, and perhaps to engage in spiritual rituals. Clusters of these communities have been preserved
in the Far View Sites, where we were able to walk into the remains of the rooms
in the Coyote Village.
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| Villages were close together |
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| Reservoir used to collect water from rain or snow melt |
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| Cliff Palace from across the canyon |
These Ancestral Puebloans agricultural fields were around
their communities. There is a reservoir
where they collected water, probably from rain run off or snow melt. They also built check dams across dry washes,
to collect water and rich soil rinsed down after storms.
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| Ruins everywhere |
The mesa is ribbed with steep sided canyons. No one is sure why they decided to move their
homes into huge alcoves on these cliff faces.
It could have been for protection from the elements. It could be that they needed to cultivate all
arable land and their population had outgrown the small communities. We will never know.
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| A 4-story tower |
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| A village in a cliff |
The cliff dwellings are a marvel. Stones were collected from stream beds and
carried up the cliffs. Water for mortar
was carried up or down the cliff (depending on the location of the
source). Hand and foot holds were pecked
out of the rock of the cliff face as they climbed up to the fields, to carry
food or water, or to visit other cliff communities. The communities have kivas, and public
spaces. There are storerooms and granaries
to store the harvest for the winter. Some
of the towers are 3 stories tall. There
are remains of more than 600 of these communities in the park.
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| Spruce Tree House |
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| Square walls and round walls |
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| Built all the way to the roof |
Spruce Tree House is behind the Museum Visitors
Center. It is the third largest in the
park, and has been partially restored. You
usually can walk by it and look at it up close, however, the trail was closed
because of damage to the trail over the winter.
We were able to look at it from the other side of the cavern. The Spruce Tree House community is estimated
to have included 60-90 individuals who lived in 19 households. It has 120 rooms, 8 kivas and 2 towers. Some of the interior walls are plastered and
have the remains of geometric decorations drawn on them. These were not primitive cave dwellers!
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| This was likely a grainary or storage area, above Spruce Tree House |
As we drove along the Mesa Top Loop, we stopped at several
overlooks, where we could see dwellings built into alcoves on the cliff on the
opposite side of the canyon. Once you
get used to seeing them, it seems like every alcove has a wall, a few rooms, or
a sizeable village built in it.
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| Inside Cliff Palace - kivas in the foreground |
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| Small rocks were stuck into the mortar to support and straighten the stones |
We took the ranger led tour of the Cliff Palace, a village
of 150 rooms, 75 constructed open areas, and 21 kivas. It probably housed 100-120 people. It has a lot of rooms that do not have
hearths that archeologists do not designate as “living” rooms, which might have
been used for some kind of governance or other purpose for the region. The entry stairs for tours to the palace were
closed, so we entered by way of the exit, climbing down 3 10-foot ladders, and
then followed a narrow, windy set of stone stairs down to the ruins from the
cliff top. We returned back up to our
cars the same way. You could see some
foot and hand holds on the cliff face.
While we were there, we were allowed to walk among the ruins, peer in
doorways, and look out at the view across the canyon.
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| Amazing |
There are two other sets of ruins that you can visit with a
ranger led tour, those tours start being offered in the end of May.
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| Double walls with rubble in the middle supported multi-story structures |
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| White plugs were inserted where samples were taken for tree-ring dating of the wood used in construction |
The Ancestral Puebloans were prosperous. They had leisure time to create beautiful
things. They were able to shape stones
and use them to build straight walls high up on the side of a cliff. They did not have a written language and little
is actually known about them. The Navajo
word, Anasazi, that used to refer to the people of Mesa Verde is no longer
used. Instead they are tied to the
modern Pueblo peoples of the Southwest who revere the ruins as the places of
their forefathers. Much of what
archeologists surmise about the Ancestral Puebloans is derived from current day
Pueblo people, their social structures, beliefs, stories and legends.
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One question for which there doesn’t seem to be an answer
is “why did they leave?” Over the course
of two generations, they moved away.
Tree rings in some of their wooden construction beams, tell us there was
a 20+year drought, so perhaps food and water became scarce. This could have led to fights between
villages over resources. No one knows,
and legends say that they just left.
What they left behind is wonderful, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.
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| Toe and hand holds pecked out of the cliff rock |
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| Statue at the Visitors Center |
Mesa Verde is very near the 4 Corners Monument where Utah,
Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona all meet in a corner. The Monument is on Navajo land and is
operated by the reservation. You pay $5
a person to get in and take your picture standing at the 4 corners. Local
artists have booths around the perimeter selling jewelry and other crafts. We visited the 4 Corners Monument as we drove
in to Mesa Verde. We arrived 10-minutes
before it closed, and most of the artists had left already.
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| Standing in 4 states at once |
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| Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona |
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| Happy cliff visitors! |
