The Anasazi

1
Southwest Culture Area
The Fate of the The Anasazi
2
Chaco Canyon

• Greatest site of Anasazi culture
• Great population density
• Linked communities
• Pueblo Bonita - Largest
• Center of Anasazi world (?)
• Controlled trade (?), Politics (?), Ritual (?)
• Turquoise (?) Pottery (?)

3
Hungo pavi
Pueblo Bonita
4
Kin Kletso
5
Fate of Anasazi
Factors to consider ?
6
Factors to consider Drought and Depletion

• Evidence from tree rings (dendochronology)
• poor harvests
• kept a two-year supply of food but
• abandoned high-density communities
• spread out on the land
• Hunting and lower-intensity food producing
• Eventual lack of wood
• Building supply (beams and posts)
• Fuel for heating and cooking

7
Factors to considerEnvironmental degradation

• Soil
• Leached/loss of minerals
• Salinization (salt)
• Deforestation
• Needed to go farther and farther away to collect
  wood, until it became impractical

8
Factors to considerWarfare

• Forensic evidence in Late Period
• Bone trauma
• evidence of violent sudden and mass death
• Post-mortem destruction (after death)
• cannibalism
• controversy a common practice?
• Coprolite evidence sparse (what is in the feces?)
  
• so probably not common

9
Conclusion Multi-factor

• Drought, ecological degradation, and warfare went
  hand in hand
• Stresses caused by first two might have created
  violence among groups
• No evidence that warfare was with an alien group,
  although speculation has centered on Dine (Navajo
  and Apache) who entered Southwest about at this
  time

10
AnasaziNo Big Mystery?

• Most dense/stratified societies decline at some
  point, and usually as a result of a similar
  combination of factors
• Maya
• Mesopotamia
• Us (?)
• Warfare always enters the picture at the end, as
  people fight over diminished resources
• People rarely vanish entirely, but adjust to
  changed circumstances

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Pueblo peoples as Anasazi

• Puebloans retained many of the same cultural
  features
• Building style
• Kivas
• Even specific sacred beings, e.g., kokapelli
• Lower density of settlement

• Heavily defended settlements,
• often on mesas
• Allowed them to cope w/often
• hostile outsiders
• Retain their culture in a
• protected setting.

Taos Pueblo
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Pueblo Peoples in history

• Protective and secretive, have survived to this
  day with an intact culture and language
• Defended against enemies for the last 700 years
• Enemies included
• Dine
• Spanish and Mexicans
• Anglos