Two major groups of prehistoric peoples inhabited the San Juan Skyway region, the Archaic and the Anasazi. Of the two, the Anasazi are by far the better known. Visitors flock from throughout the world to see the famous cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, the silent stone cities at Chaco Canyon, and the hundreds of other prehistoric Anasazi sites in parks and monuments scattered throughout the Four Comers. Less well known, but equally important, are the thousands of Anasazi sites found on private property, Indian reservations, and lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in the Four Comers area.

The Anasazi were a prehistoric farming people who lived in southwestern Colorado for more than thirteen centuries, from just before the birth of Christ until A.D. 1300. They left behind tens of thousands of large and small villages, hamlets, towers, ceremonial kivas, and other structures built of stone, adobe, and wood. Though most of these structures have fallen into low mounds of rock over the centuries, many ruins remain virtually intact in protected sandstone canyon alcoves. In southwestern Colorado today, it almost impossible to walk through a pinon forest, along a canyon rim, or across a farmer's field without encountering a scattering of broken pottery, chips of stone, and tumbled masonry walls of a prehistoric village. What is common to the residents of the Four Comers is rare and exciting to those from other parts of the country and the world.

Unlike the Archaic peoples and other mobile hunter-gatherers found in the San Juan Mountains, the Anasazi were sedentary farmers. Their primary crop was corn, or Zea maize, a multicolored form of the corn we grow today. They also grew substantial quantities of squashes and pumpkins and several varieties of beans, a staple crop still grown by dryland farmers in southwestern Colorado today.

The Anasazi are classified by archaeologists as belonging to the Formative Period of human society. This period is characterized by subsistence farming, construction of permanent or semi-permanent dwellings, production of a large variety of tools and crafts such as pottery and jewelry, use of storage vessels and rooms, and the development of socially integrative structures for community rituals and ceremonials. Formative peoples also usually conducted substantial trade with nearby groups.

Many of these unique Anasazi sites can be found along the Skyway or within a short drive of it. Several dozen of these sites have been excavated and are open to visitors.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANASAZI CULTURE

Anasazi remains in southwestern Colorado are at the northern edge of the prehistoric world of the Anasazi (Cordell 1984). At its peak, this world stretched from the lower slopes of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado throughout most of the Four Comers region and much of the Colorado Plateau.

The Four Corners is a region of great environmental and topographic diversity, with landscapes ranging from the green, well watered San Juan Mountains to the hot, dry, sandy Navajo desert. In between lie miles of flat mesas cut by sheer-walled sandstone canyons. These mesas are covered with dense gray-green pinon and juniper forests and expanses of great sage plains, broken here and there by the wide, tree-lined river valleys of the Colorado, the San Juan, the Rio Grande, and smaller connecting streams.

This land possesses beauty as diverse as the environments and landforms themselves. The former Anasazi realm includes the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Canyonlands National Park, Canyon de Chelly, Mesa Verde, the San Juan Mountains, and numerous other places known for their outstanding scenery. Because Anasazi farmers needed a long growing season, most of the Anasazi sites along the Skyway lie at lower elevations between Durango and Dolores, south of the San Juan National Forest.

The Anasazi lived in southwestern Colorado for more than thirteen centuries. Emerging from the Archaic hunters and gatherers, they developed slowly, over many centuries, the culture we recognize today. Archaeologists have carefully tracked that development and have divided the culture into a number of different time periods (Matlock and Warren 1988). Change from one period to another was slow, imperceptible to the Anasazi themselves, and erratic from place to place.

THE BASKETMAKER PERIODS (200 B.C.-A.D. 750)

The earliest evidence for the Anasazi culture in southwestern Colorado was found near the modern town of Durango. In the mid-1930s a local amateur archaeologist, Zeke Flora, discovered two deep sandstone caves, or rock shelters, in a remote valley just north of Durango. At the back of the cave he found scores of small red, white, green, and black figures painted on the sandstone walls but observed little else that would indicate a major archaeological site. However, when he excavated a section of the North Shelter, he found, buried in a natural sandstone "vault," the most remarkable mummified human remains ever encountered in the United States. The dry cave environment had preserved intact the bodies of over half a dozen 2,000-year-old Anasazi people. Included with them, or nearby, were also well-preserved baskets, sandals, nets, cordage, beads, necklaces, and many other rare objects.

Recognizing that he had discovered a site of great importance, Flora called the University of Colorado Henderson Museum in Boulder and talked to Earl Morris, a prominent southwestern archaeologist of the time. After a preliminary assessment, Morris concluded that the site, called variously the Falls Creek Caves or Durango Rock Shelters, was from what archaeologists called the Basketmaker II Period of Anasazi culture, a period previously unknown in Colorado. Before Flora's discovery archaeologists working at these early Basketmaker 11 sites had found only small stone-slab-lined pits. Further excavation at the Falls Creek Caves by Morris led to the discovery of actual houses used by the Basketmaker people (Morris and Burgh 1954). Even more important, wooden logs used in the wood and adobe structures had also been preserved. These wooden beams yielded dates of between 200 B.C, and A.D. 200, the oldest dates known for Anasazi people (Dean 1975).

Though the wide Animas River valley, north of Durango, is littered today with shoddy trailer houses, condominiums, golf courses, and other leavings of our own society, it would have looked very different 2,000 years ago. Across the flat river valley from Durango almost to the present site of the Tarnarron resort, one would have seen small garden plots of corn and squashes laid out to conform with the land and the figures of Anasazi men, women, and children working the farm plots.

Based on the discoveries at the Falls Creek Caves and later sites found in the valley, the Basketmaker Anasazi probably wore elaborate necklaces of juniper berry, shell, and ground, polished colored stone (Morris and Burgh 1954). Women carried babies on their backs in elaborately prepared cradle boards.

Basketmaker Anasazi sites are rare, and the population probably was relatively small. The people lived in small family groups and probably hunted and gathered as much food as they raised by farming. By the end of this period, the Anasazi were well established in the Four Comers, and from this base they expanded throughout a large area of the Southwest.

During the next period of Anasazi culture, the Basketmaker III Period (ca. A.D. 450-750), the Anasazi continued to live in the Animas Valley north of present-day Durango. But they had by now spread widely throughout the Four Corners and over the full range of the prehistoric Anasazi world (Nickens and Hull 1982). Basketmaker III culture varied from earlier Anasazi culture in a number of significant ways: the development of a distinctive type of subterranean or semi-subterranean"pithouse" with an associated storage room or rooms; the development of ceramic storage and cooking vessels to supplement the baskets used almost exclusively during the earlier period; the addition of beans to the agricultural inventory; and other changes.

During the Basketmaker III Period, nearly all Anasazi people lived in pithouses near their farm plots and close to available water sources. The pithouses seem to be single family units, although excavations have revealed some two- to five-unit pithouse villages that were probably occupied by extended families. Each pithouse would normally contain the generally circular subterranean main living structure, a slightly smaller attached antechamber or storage room, a central firepit (often constructed of stone or with a clay collar), and a seemingly random set of subfloor pits and storage vaults, some filled with sand on which to set hot pottery vessels. The occasional presence of outdoor firepits attests to the cooking and processing of foods out of doors. Careful excavations of these plaza areas have encountered large, bell-shaped storage pits dug into the ground surface. These pits were ordinarily lined with clay and would have been relatively insect-, rodent-, and human-proof

All of these storage pits tell us that the Basketmaker III Anasazi must have been very successful in their farming, hunting, wild plant gathering, and other subsistence activities and that surplus foods must have been available. The fact that these pithouses and small villages are scattered widely and in open, unprotected locations suggests that the Basketmaker III peoples must have been relatively free of hostilities from outside groups or from disagreements and rivalries within.

THE PUEBLO I PERIOD (A.D. 750-900)

The Pueblo I (PI) Period extends from about A.D. 700 or 750 to A.D. 900 or 950, depending on what part of the Anasazi world you happened to be in. During this period, the pithouse continued to be used for living, but the first above-ground structures were built. These small, contiguous rooms were made of upright wooden poles coated on both sides with a thick adobe or mud plaster, an architectural form known worldwide as "wattle and daub" (Plog: 1979). The rooms tended to be arranged in a semicircle and generally faced south, capturing the sun's warmth in the plaza work areas. The Anasazi and other peoples in the Four Comers region regularly made very effective use of solar energy.

In its most typical form, a PI village consisted of several fairly large pithouses with an arc of above-ground wattle and daub structures nearby. Occasionally some of these structures used stone masonry in portions of the walls, with upright stones providing a stabilizing foundation for the vertical post and adobe walls.

Another major characteristic of the villages of this period was their increased size and the presence of structures for ceremonial and/or community use. Over time pithouses became larger and larger, then more and more standardized in terms of their internal features, with a great deal of care being taken in their construction. These elaborate pithouses became, in time, the well known multifunction (ceremonial and social) kivas of the Anasazi and their modern descendants, the Pueblo Indians, who continue to use them today.

As you might expect, the other crafts, tools, and material items manufactured by the Anasazi during the PI Period were also more elaborate and greater in kind and number compared to the Basketmaker III Period. Ceramic vessels with black and white painted decorations were well made. Baskets and sandals continued in use, as did many elaborate forms of jewelry in shell, turquoise, jet, clay, and other materials. Evidence of these early periods, the first 1,000 years of Anasazi culture, is hard to see from the Skyway itself, but Mesa Verde National Park and the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores provide excellent displays of sites from this era.

THE PUEBLO II AND PUEBLO III ANASAZI PERIODS (A.D. 900-1300)

By about A.D. 900, the Anasazi were living in masonry villages in large family or clan groups. These settlements and the highly distinctive pottery from the Pueblo II and III Periods probably represent the best known and most distinctive characteristics of Anasazi people. During both of these last periods of their history, the Anasazi produced unique and enduring contributions to world culture.

During the Pueblo II Period, the Anasazi splintered into a number of regionally distinct groups in various parts of the Four Corners, each with its own unique masonry, pottery, and other cultural items. The Anasazi of southwestern Colorado are called the Northern San Juan or Mesa Verde Branch. Evidence of this branch can be seen along the Skyway, and therefore it is the focus of this discussion.

The masonry walls that form the homes and villages of the PH and PIII sites were made of shaped sandstone set in a simple adobe or clay mortar. The villages consist of clusters of mostly rectangular rooms that by the later part of the PH Period were often two stories in height. Within or outside these living and storage rooms were found circular masonry-walled subterranean kivas. These Anasazi manufactured hundreds of fine craft items. Foremost of these were beautifully made ceramic bowls, pitchers, specialized ritual jars, finely corrugated cooking and water-storage vessels, and unusual effigy and ritual forms. Though they are best known for their fine, creamy-white, almost perfectly smooth vessels bearing deep black geometric designs, the Anasazi in southwestern Colorado manufactured and traded for scores of different types and forms.

During the PII and PIII Periods, the population and size of Anasazi villages grew dramatically. Whereas early PII masonry villages had four or five rooms and a single kiva, by the mid-1100s large Anasazi settlements such as the Yellow Jacket site and others contained hundreds of rooms, kivas, and other structures within what by now had become substantial towns (Rohn 1989). Most of these large communities have yet to be excavated, and much remains to be learned about the Anasazi.

During the PII Period, the Anasazi of southwestern Colorado became part of or were influenced by so-called regional systems that developed out of Chaco Canyon to the south (Judge 1991). Several scores of small, specialized villages with traits of the Chaco people were constructed throughout the Four Corners. A number were built in southwestern Colorado, including the Escalante ruin and the Chimney Rock site (Reed et al. 1979, Eddy 1977). The regional sites probably served as trading centers, ritual centers, or processing centers for raw materials needed by the Chacoans. The Chacoan regional system collapsed in the late 1100s. Other, more complex features of Anasazi culture in southwestern Colorado at this time included the development of irrigation and water-control systems, extensive and intensive farming, large population centers or central towns, and communities exerting influence on surrounding smaller villages. All of these phenomena bespeak the elaborate and complex nature of Anasazi society at this time.

Despite these indications that Anasazi life was flourishing, troubles set in by the early thirteenth century, and many of the Anasazi in southwestern Colorado moved into large sandstone caves or overhangs, where they built large villages, apparently for defensive purposes. These are the cliff dwellings for which the Anasazi are so well known. In fact, they represent only the very latest period of Anasazi culture and certainly one of its most unusual, if also most intriguing, forms.

At the end of the PIII Period, the Anasazi abandoned southwestern Colorado and other parts of the Four Corners. Most moved south to settle in or near existing villages along the Rio Grande River and its close tributaries. A few may have drifted into the villages of the Hopi in Arizona. This unusual total exodus from Colorado by a people so very successful in the past has puzzled archaeologists and visitors to the region since the Europeans first encountered the ruins in the late 1800s (Cordell 1984). Although some of the reasons have begun to emerge, a full explanation remains unclear. The most common and certainly one of the strongest theories is that environmental stress caused by a period of extreme dryness during the last part of the thirteenth century forced the abandonment. But drought alone cannot explain the migration into New Mexico.

With the collapse of the Chacoan branch in the latter part of the 1100s, a century of turmoil and instability seemed to follow for the Northern San Juan Anasazi. Some of them reoccupied the great cities at Chaco after its downfall. There may have been hostility and violence between the two branches or increased raiding and warfare between the Anasazi and nearby hunting and gathering groups. The location of villages in the cliffs would seem to suggest strongly that the Northern San Juan Anasazi sought protection against someone. There may have been too many people, too little food, and/or too little firewood to provide warmth, and Anasazi society may have been disrupted and distressed from the events leading to the collapse itself. Many archaeologists today look strongly to social and or organizational problems among the Anasazi (Cordell 1984).

In any case, there is no doubt that as the Anasazi left Colorado, they migrated into New Mexico and Arizona, where their descendants live today. They did not, as you will frequently hear, disappear mysteriously. The Pueblo Indians along the Rio Grande and the Hopi in northeastern Arizona include some of the descendants of the Anasazi. The way of life of the Anasazi, changed and altered in the last 700 years, is alive and well with them. But that is another story.

SUMMARY

Although the San Juan Skyway unquestionably offers some of the most beautiful mountain grandeur in the United States, it is well to remember that people have lived in and used the resources of these mountains, mesas, and canyons of southwestern Colorado for more than 8,000 years. The idea of pristine natural areas unused and unvisited by humans is a modern misconception. The Anasazi, the modern Ute Indians, and the Archaic people and Paleo-Indians before them have considered the wilderness areas of the San Juans home for a very long time. The lower mesas and canyons were intensively used by native American agriculturists for centuries. The farms you see today in southwestern Colorado are simply the latest example of a use that has been going on for almost 2,000 years.

REFERENCES

Cordell, L. S., 1984. Prehistory of the Southwest. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, Inc., 409 pp.

Dean, J., 1975. Tree ring dates from Colorado, west Durango area. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona, Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, 89 pp.

Eddy, F. W., 1977. Archaeological investigations at Chimney Rock Mesa, 1970-1972. Boulder, CO: Colorado Archaeological Society, Memoir 1, 91 pp.

Judge, W. J., 1991. Chaco: Current views of prehistory and the regional system, in P. Crown and W. Judge, eds., Prehistoric regional systems in the American southwest, Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 369 pp.

Matlock, G., and S. Warren, eds., 1988. Enemy ancestors: The Anasazi world with a guide to sites. Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Press, 116 pp.

Morris, E. H., and R. F. Burgh, 1954. Basket maker sites near Durango, Colorado. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, Publication 604, 135 pp.

Nickens, P. R., and D. A. Hull, 1982. San Juan resource area, in Archaeological resources of southwestern Colorado, Denver: U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Cultural Resources Series 13.

Plog, F., 1979. Prehistory: Western Anasazi, in W. Sturtevant and A. Ortiz, eds., Handbook of North American Indians, southwest, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 108-130.

Reed, A. D., J. A. Hallasi, A. S. White, and D. A. Breternitz, 1979. The archeology and stabilization of the Dominguez and Escalante ruins. Denver: U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Cultural Resources Series 7, 496 pp.

Rohn, A. H., 1989. Northern San Juan prehistory, in L. S. Cordell and G. J. Gunermans, eds., Dynamics of southwest prehistory, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.