Mesa Verde - Undercliff Dwellings

Friday, 1st October 2010

Making a return journey into the Mesa Verde National Park, we were met at Cliff Palace by the National Parks guide. After an interesting tour we moved on to Balcony House where a number of steep ladders and a tunnel had to be navigated to complete the tour. We enjoyed a picnic lunch near the Chapin Mesa Museum before heading down to Spruce House on our way along the Petroglyph Point Trail. This turned out to be a really good walk along the side of the canyon with the route undulating and exposed at times.

About 1,400 years ago, long before any European exploration of the New World, a group of Indians living in the Four Corners region chose Mesa Verde for their home. For over 700 years their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone cities in the sheltered recesses of the canyon walls. Then in the late 1200's, within the span of one or two generations, they abandoned their homes and moved away.

We call these people the Anasazi, from a Navajo word meaning "the ancient ones." Ever since local cowboys discovered the cliff dwellings a century ago, archaeologists have been trying to understand the life of these people. But despite decades of excavation, analysis, classification, and comparison our knowledge is still sketchy. We will never know the whole story of their existence, for they left no written records and much that was important in their lives has perished. Yet for all their silence, these ruins speak with a certain eloquence. They tell of a people adept at building, artistic in their crafts, and skilful at wresting a living from a difficult land. They are evidence of a society that over the centuries accumulated skills and traditions and passed them on from one generation to another. By classic times (A.D. 100 to 1300) the Anasazi of Mesa Verde were the heirs of a vigorous civilization, with accomplishments in community living and the arts that rank among the finest expressions of human culture in ancient America.

Taking advantage of nature, the Anasazi built their dwellings under the overhanging cliffs. Their basic construction material was sandstone, which they shaped into rectangular blocks about the size of a loaf of bread. The mortar between the blocks was a mix of mud and water. Rooms averaged about six feet by eight, space enough for two or three people. Isolated rooms in the rear and on the upper levels were generally used for storing crops.