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| Doorways into the dwellings at Far View Ruins. The masonry construction styles at Mesa Verde are very similar to the masonry at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. This suggests a strong cultural connection between the two largest regional population centers of the Anasazi culture. Archeological data suggests that the first Ancestral Puebloans settled in the Mesa Verde area around 550 A.D. at about the time that nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyles began to fade relative to the growing populations that subsisted or supplemented their diets through more sedentary agricultural living. This was also about the time that bow-and-arrow technology replaced the older lance and atlatl (spear-throwing technologies). The early Puebloan people are known as Basketmakers because many baskets were found in association with their pithouse-style dwellings. By the time of the Classic Period (1100 to 1300 A.D.) pottery had become an important part of the regional trade and commerce in the Anasazi cultural world and beyond. |
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