The Mesa Verde World

by Noble, David Grant

• ISBN13: 9781930618756
• ISBN10: 1930618751
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-30
• Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS

Summary

Mesa Verde, with its stunning landscapes and cliff dwellings, evokes all the romance of American archaeology. It has intrigued researchers and visitors for more than a century. But "Mesa Verde" represents more than cliff dwellings-its peoples created a culture that thrived for a thousand years in Southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. Archaeologists have discovered dozens of long-buried hamlets and villages spread for miles across the Great Sage Plain west and north of Mesa Verde. Only lately have these sites begun to reveal their secrets.In recent decades, archaeologists have been working intensively in the Mesa Verde region to build the story of its ancestral Pueblo inhabitants. The Mesa Verde World showcases new findings about the region's prehistory, environment, and archaeological history, from newly discovered reservoir systems on Mesa Verde to astronomical alignments at Yellow Jacket Pueblo. Key topics include farming, settlement, sacred landscapes, cosmology and astronomy, rock art, warfare, migration, and contemporary Pueblo perspectives.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
A Short Archaeological Chronology for the Mesa Verde Region	x
Introduction	xv
Through the Looking Glass: The Environment of the Ancient Mesa Verdeans	1	(8)
Karen R. Adams
The Earliest Mesa Verdeans: Hunters, Foragers, and First Farmers	9	(10)
Mona Charles
The Genesis of Pueblos: Innovations between 500 and 900 CE	19	(10)
Richard H. Wilshusen
The Mesa Verde Region during Chaco Times	29	(10)
William D. Lipe
Turbulent Times in the Mesa Verde World	39	(10)
Mark D. Varien
``We Came from the South, We Came from the North'': Some Tewa Origin Stories	49	(10)
Tessie Naranjo
Craft Arts of the Mesa Verde	59	(8)
Richard W. Lang
Simulation and Imagination Fistfight in the Mesa Verde	67	(8)
Timothy A. Kohler
Mesa Verdean Sacred Landscapes	75	(10)
Winston Hurst
Jonathan Till
The Cosmic and the Sacred at Yellow Jacket Pueblo and Mesa Verde	85
J. McKim Malville