Something unusual was going on in the Cliff Palace area in the 1200s. The Anasazi on Mesa Verde did not start moving into cliff dwellings until after 1150. For 600 years or so, various groups had lived on the Mesa top or slopes of hills. But in the cliff faces surrounding Cliff Palace there are at least 33 separate cliff dwellings, comprising over 500 rooms and 60 kivas.
Some of these structures suggest important ceremonial and ritual functions. On the promontory directly across from Cliff Palace stands a "D-shaped" double-walled structure that Jesse Fewkes, early archeologist, called Sun Temple.
It is indeed aligned to various solar, and possibly lunar, events. It also has a circular tower that may have had spiritual significance.
The same sort of "D-Shaped" structures first showed up at Chaco Canyon, 100 miles to the south. Chaco was clearly a major ceremonial center and its Great Houses and Great Kivas also displayed elaborate solar and lunar alignments. We were not allowed to go inside the ruins,
but we at least got a "peak" at some of its mystery.
As important as it must have been, it was never completed. Everyone had moved out of the region by 1300. Why?
The simplest explanation is that a severe drought drove them out. One of the first signs that their society was in trouble was that they began eating their turkeys! For centuries turkeys had been valued for their feathers. Now their protein was needed. Maybe eating turkeys is a sign of a society in decline.
The problem with the drought explanation is that everyone seems to have abandoned Mesa Verde. Moreover, everyone abandoned the Montezuma Valley between 1250 and 1300. Moreover, everyone abandoned SE Utah at the same time. Moreover, the Fremont culture disappeared from north and central Utah at the same time.
I strongly suspect that archaeologists are not content with the drought explanation for this universal and total abandonment. Right now it is one of the hottest topics in the literature on the ancestral Puebloans. Were there invaders and enemies? Why is there evidence of massive violence at various Pueblo sites in the 1200s?
Were the huge architectural building programs and ritual complexes attempts to ward off some sort of fear? What were the dynamics of this mass exodus and where did the Anasazi go? Those in Mesa Verde region probably went 150 miles to the SW to the mountains and mesa of northern New Mexico, along the Rio Grande river valley. Others, from Utah, probably joined ancestral groups in Arizona to form Hopi villages.
In any case, cliff dwellings below Sun Temple suggest intense religious and ceremonial functions. This is especially true of twin sites: Fire Temple and New Fire House.
New Fire House
is split level, with the lower level placing great emphasis on three prominent kivas.
Interestingly, one can see from long-range view the hand and toe holds that allowed residents to climb from one level to the next.
The Anasazi were climbers, like Mountain Sheep found in their petroglyphs.
The building called "Fire Temple"
is even more obviously a place of important ceremony. Like Long House, it has a very large, prominent dance plaza.
Although we could only view it from across the canyon, the foot drums are clearly visible.
Interestingly enough, the Tewa-speaking Puebloans in northern New Mexico started building large multi-storied buildings in the 1300s, in response to a massive population upsurge. The building complexes resemble Anasazi complexes in one notable detail: they are built around large, central plazas that have served as public ceremonial space to bind clans in the pueblo to one another emotionally and spiritually. One other important detail characterized these late pueblo settlements: they were built high on mesa tops and mountain slopes, in obvious isolated and "defensive" settings.
Recent scholarship suggest that the parallels with Mesa Verde, Sun Temple, and Fire Temple are not mere coincidences.
No comments:
Post a Comment