rogerramjet_2003 Report This Comment Date: September 26, 2006 10:42AM
The Anasazi
The People of the Mountains, Mesas and Grasslands
Like their cultural kin – the Mogollon and the Hohokam – in the deserts to
the south, the earliest Anasazi peoples felt the currents of revolutionary
change during the first half of the first millennium. Perhaps in a response to
Mesoamerican influences from Mexico, they began to turn away from the nomadism
of the ancient hunting and gathering life, the seasonal rounds calibrated to the
movement of game and the ripening of wild plants, the material impoverishment
imposed by the limitations of the burdens they could carry on their backs. They
began living in small hamlets. They broke the land and took up agriculture. Over
time, they acquired more possessions, stored food, made pottery, adopted the bow
and arrow, domesticated dogs and turkeys. They still hunted and gathered, not as
their only avenues for acquiring food, but as a complement to cultivated corn,
beans, squash and other crops.
In the first half of their history, the Anasazi distinguished themselves
primarily through the artistry of their basketry, which they crafted from the
fibers of plants. In the second half, they left their mark on a much grander
scale, through the construction of perhaps the most stunning prehistoric
communities in the United States. The Anasazi would prove be resourceful,
adaptable and, ultimately, the most enduring of the Pueblo cultural
traditions.
The Anasazi Region
The heart of the Anasazi region lay across the southern Colorado Plateau and the
upper Rio Grande drainage. It spanned northeastern Arizona, northwestern New
Mexico, southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado—a land of forested
mountain ranges, stream-dissected mesas, arid grasslands and occasional river
bottoms.
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