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,…

Stretching west and northwest from Cortez to the Utah border, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument was established in 2000 and boasts the densest collection of archaeological sites in the United States. An estimated 30,000 sites—including cliff…

The Falls Creek rock shelters are the most important archaeological discovery in the Durango area. Along with nearby Talus Village, they are type-sites for the Eastern Basketmaker II period (400 BCE–400 CE) of the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) tradition,…

Although it is on the eastern fringe of the area occupied by a people known to archaeology as the Fremont, Colorado is nevertheless important in the Fremont story, since clues to their origins and end are found there. Additionally, the presence of…

Long House is the second-largest cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde National Park. Built by Ancestral Puebloans in the 1200s, the 150-room dwelling was rediscovered by the Wetherill brothers and Charles Mason in early 1890. In the late 1950s and early 1960s,…

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…

The Pueblo of Santa Ana is one of the seven Keres-speaking Pueblos that currently inhabit the state of New Mexico. The homes of the current inhabitants’ ancestors can be found in what is now Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado…

Archaeologists use the term Sopris phase to refer to unique Native American sites found only on the Purgatoire River west of Trinidad, Colorado, and on the upper tributaries of the Canadian River west of Raton and Cimarron, New Mexico (Fig. 1). Sopris…

Spruce Tree House is the third-largest cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde National Park, and the first seen by most visitors because of its location near park headquarters. Built by the Ancestral Pueblo in the 1200s, Euro-Americans came to know&nbsp…

Located southwest of Montrose, Tabeguache Cave was used during the Basketmaker II period (400 BCE–400 CE) of the Ancestral Puebloan tradition. Excavated in 1939–41 by the Colorado archaeologist Clarence T. Hurst, it was Hurst’s first excavation in the…

The Gateway tradition refers to a set of archaeological sites within western Montrose and San Miguel Counties, Colorado, that appear similar to Pueblo II–period (AD 900–1150) sites to the south in the core homeland of the Ancestral Puebloans (Figs. 1 and…

Yucca House National Monument was established to protect and preserve a large Ancestral Pueblo village south of Cortez in the southwestern corner of Colorado. Yucca House is an important Ancestral Pueblo village based on its size, unique configurations,…

The modern pueblo at Zia is one of nineteen in New Mexico that can trace some part of its history to residence in southwestern Colorado. Located on a mesa above the Jemez River about thirty-five miles northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the pueblo of…