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Ancestral Pueblo

Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners Region

Added by yongli on 05/09/2016 - 14:21, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 19:36
Formerly labeled Anasazi, the Ancestral Puebloan culture is the most widely known of the ancient cultures of Colorado. The people who built the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde and the great houses of Chaco Canyon were subsistence farmers of corn, beans, and squash. The structures of this culture date...

Chaco Canyon

Added by yongli on 08/15/2016 - 13:02, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 19:41
In the eleventh century, Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico was the center of a Native American cultural region about the size of the state of Indiana. It encompassed most of southwestern Colorado, from Chimney Rock National Monument on the east to Far View House at Mesa Verde National Park...

Cottonwood Cave

Added by yongli on 05/25/2016 - 12:42, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 19:40
Located near Cottonwood Creek on the Uncompahgre Plateau in Montrose County , Cottonwood Cave is a prehistoric site from the Basketmaker II period (400 BCE–400 CE) of the Ancestral Puebloan tradition. Excavated in 1947 by Clarence T. Hurst , the cave yielded a buried cache of corn that was later...

Gustaf Nordenskiöld and the Mesa Verde Region

Added by yongli on 08/20/2015 - 09:34, last changed on 04/03/2021 - 08:31
In 1891 the young Swedish scientist Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868–95) arrived in Colorado, seeking both a cure for his tuberculosis and a look at the wonders of the West. His experiences over the next two years set in motion a series of events that would ultimately lead to the passage of the first...

Kivas

Added by yongli on 03/04/2016 - 10:39, last changed on 09/09/2020 - 15:44
Kivas were architecturally unique rooms or structures built by Ancestral Puebloans in southwest Colorado that served important ceremonial and social functions. Architecturally, they are recognized in the archaeological record in southwestern Colorado as far back as AD 500, although there are...

Lowry Site

Added by yongli on 11/20/2015 - 14:09, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 19:52
Named for early homesteader George Lowry, the Lowry ruin near Cortez ( Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, County Rd 7.25, Pleasant View, CO 81331) is a pueblo with thirty-seven rooms, eight kivas , and one Great Kiva. Built between about 1090 and 1120 CE, the Ancestral Pueblo site dates to...

Mesa Verde National Park

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 11:50, last changed on 01/22/2022 - 11:53
Mesa Verde National Park was established on June 29, 1906. It is the largest of the National Park Service parcels protecting cultural resources in Colorado, with nearly 5,000 documented sites, including about 600 cliff dwellings . A majority of the sites are associated with Ancestral Pueblo...

Morefield Mound

Added by yongli on 02/03/2017 - 13:18, last changed on 05/11/2020 - 09:37
Morefield Mound sits in the middle of the wide valley at the bottom of Morefield Canyon in Mesa Verde National Park . It served as a water supply for ancient Native Americans a thousand years ago, making it one of the earliest known domestic water-supply works in the United States. The reservoir...

Origins of Mesa Verde National Park

Added by yongli on 10/28/2021 - 13:00, last changed on 10/28/2021 - 13:00
Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 as the country’s ninth national park. The site was visited and considered sacred by multiple Indigenous nations before it began attracting interest from white Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While male scientists and...

The Formative Period in Prehistory

Added by yongli on 11/03/2015 - 10:09, last changed on 08/11/2022 - 07:21
The Formative is the last of several periods in a sequence of cultural development that traces the overall progression from stone-tool-using, hunter- gatherer societies to fully developed agricultural societies. The process that occurred is analogous to the Old World’s “Neolithic Revolution.” It is...
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