Frequently Asked Questions

This FAQ lists a number of good questions that I have received regarding information presented at this Web site. Additional comments or questions are welcome. What is a "Sipapu"? Did the inability of the Anasazi to obtain and trade turquoise contribute to the demise of the Chacoan culture? Do we know anything about the simple day-to-day activities of the Anasazi people's lives? What's up with this cannibalism stuff? Did the Anasazi children have toys with which to play games? Are there any new findings or evolving theories about the Anasazi? What are some of the better books on the Anasazi and related history? What was the purpose of the prehistoric Chaco Anasazi roads? I've seen reference to four major divisions of the Anasazi, while others have referred to three divisions. What do you think about this issue? Why do you continue to use the term "Anasazi," which many modern Pueblo find offensive? What is the basis for the theory that the modern-day Pueblo Indians are related to the prehistoric Anasazi? Has any DNA evidence been found for this relationship? Did The Anasazi have a written language of any kind? What kind of language was spoken? How long were the Anasazi around until they disappeared? Why did they make all those weird carvings on rocks and what do they mean? How did the Anasazi live in such a hot place? What did the Anasazi use to dye their cotton? Where can I get population estimates for Chaco Canyon? Can you tell me something about Anasazi religion? Is there any evidence that the Anasazi played sports similar to soccer? Was the road system associated with Chaco Canyon used for transporting goods to and from Mesoamerica? How did the Anasazi dress? Did the Anasazi have anything to do with science? Do you know of any chiefs or leaders of the Anasazi? What was the role of men in Anasazi society? What kind of government did the Anasazi have? Why are there so many pottery sherds at Anasazi sites? Is there anything in history that would indicate when the first white man "met" the Anasazi? Why put cliff dwellings such as those at Mesa Verde in such hard to reach places? What was the average lifespan of the Anasazi Indians and also their average height? What motivated pottery redistribution between Anasazi sites? What is a "Sipapu"? Pueblo histories and religion recognize two kinds of sipapus: The first is the original sipapu, through which First People entered the current world from the Third or Lower World (with the flute-playing Locust leading the way). Different Pueblo groups have different views as to where the original sipapu is located. Pueblos believe that the dead pass into the spirit world through the sipapu. Once upon a time, the dead would have been able to reemerge after a few days and their bodies revived, but Pueblo history says that Coyote covered the sipapu with a stone, and now only spirits, such as the kachinas, can pass through sipapus. The second kind of sipapu is a current passage to the Third World, which can be found as small holes or even more elaborate structures in kivas. Special bodies of water or even special places in the landscape are also often considered to be sipapus. These sipapus are the means of communication with the spirits. Did the inability of the Anasazi to obtain and trade turquoise contribute to the demise of the Chacoan culture? The role of turquoise in Chaco Anasazi society is sort of hard to figure out. Basically, all of the turquoise found in Chaco Canyon (which represents about 90% of all turquoise found in *all* prehistoric contexts in the SW) came from the Cerrillos mines near Santa Fe. It seems unlikely that given its distance from the mines, that Chaco Canyon had any direct control over turquoise. So it would have been relatively easy to cut Chaco off from the source. On the other hand, it's not clear what significance the turquoise had for the Chacoans. Some people have argued that it served like money for "purchasing" basic goods needed by the Chacoans. Or others argue that it was used as a kind of payment in the various political machinations of the Chacoans. The problem with both these arguments is that if these hypotheses were true, you'd expect to find more turquoise elsewhere in the Anasazi world, and so far, we haven't. So the turquoise issue is still wide open. Some time ago, I started a research project to track changing contexts of turquoise use, to see if I can figure out what was going on. I have a feeling that turquoise was always a critical part of various Anasazi rituals and that Chaco dominated the ritual sphere at the time and ended up amassing lots of it. Perhaps towards the end, the turquoise was used more for trading, but I don't think that it played a very large role in the demise of the Chaco Anasazi. Beyond their architecture and artifacts, do we know anything about the simple day-to-day activities of Anasazi people's lives? What did the people do when they weren't building homes and growing corn? Good question. If comparative ethnographic information and skeletal evidence provide any clue, the amount of time invested in growing corn was significant. For women, the amount of time preparing corn to eat was perhaps even more substantial. It can take hours every day just to grind enough corn for the daily meals, and this is reflected in female Anasazi skeletons that show grotesque amounts of arthritis caused by constantly kneeling and rocking back and forth, grinding on a metate. The amount of protein in the Anasazi diet was always a problem, and I suspect that men spent a considerable amount of time out trying to hunt. Despite the popular view to the contrary, the Anasazi were decidedly *not* environmentalists or conservationists, and in many areas they managed to wipe out most of the game, forcing them to spend more and more time trying to catch smaller and smaller animals. In a similar vein, collecting wood for cooking and heat would have taken a lot of time, for areas around most Anasazi communities were quickly deforested; in some cases, this deforestation forced the Anasazi to abandon their villages. Judging by both the archaeological evidence and comparison with their Pueblo descendents, the Anasazi also spent a lot of time engaged in various ritual events. Religion was closely interwoven with all of their activities, and the ritual calendar of the Anasazi was probably fairly packed. Finally, the recovery of "gaming pieces", toys, and such shows that the Anasazi did have time for entertainment. These items are very difficult for archaeologists to definitively interpret, and so only a few archaeologists have ever really investigated Anasazi entertainment. But based on analogy with their Pueblo descendents, there were a variety of games, including gambling, and sporting events, such as racing, which were pursued. Many of these were again closely tied with ritual events, especially since major ceremonies were times when many people from a variety of villages would have gotten together. What's up with this cannibalism stuff? Do you think it was hunger-induced or related to warfare or religious conflict? This is a difficult question. There are basically two issues: first, did cannibalism actually occur more than once or twice (and there is considerable disagreement on this), and, two, if it did, why? Most of the attention and research has focused on the first question, which to me is the least interesting of the two. But of course the public is fascinated with the thought of so-called "primitive" people eating one another, despite the fact that one would be hard-pressed to name a society that did not, at one time or another, engage in cannibalism. In the case of the prehistoric Southwest, the recent allegations of cannibalism have been picked up by the press, who have made a big deal out of it. The press thinks that the American public likes juicy tidbits about "weird" behaviors that other societies have engaged in. People are also intrigued because the allegations of prehistoric cannibalism contrasts so markedly with the current popular stereotype of Native Americans. In any case, given that both the public and archaeologists are interested in the subject, is there good evidence that cannibalism took place? This question has been very difficult to answer. The primary source of evidence for cannibalism in the prehistoric Southwest consists of about 50 archaeological sites where highly disarticulated and fragmented human bones have been found. This includes at least 3 sites in Chaco Canyon. At most of these 50 sites, the bones show indisputable evidence of cutmarks and other damage that could only have been caused by other humans. No one really disputes this. The problem is that there is evidence from societies all over the world of behaviors that could produce much of the damage seen on the Anasazi bones. For example, many societies lovingly prepare their dead by dismembering them, removing flesh from the bones, and/or burning them. In most societies, there are also instances where warfare is associated with acts of shockingly severe violence which includes dismemberment, removing flesh or organs, scalping, etc. All of these activities would also produce cutmarked and broken up groups of bones as seen in the Anasazi assemblages. There are two features found in some of these 50 skeletal assemblages that provide the best evidence for cannibalism. The first is what are called "anvil abrasions." These are created when a bone is placed on a rough, hard surface such as a rock and bashed with another rock. The key here is that the abrasions are only formed if the flesh has been removed from the bone. Some scholars see these abrasions as evidence that the perpetrators were trying to get to the nutritious marrow after having already removed the flesh. The second feature is "pot polish." This consists of tiny areas of polish that form when a bone is cooked in a ceramic pot. The feature was originally identified through experimental tests that were done on deer bones stirred in a reconstructed ceramic pot similar to those used by the Anasazi. Both anvil abrasions and pot polish appear in appreciable frequencies at a few of the 50 sites. Is this enough evidence for cannibalism? For some scholars, yes, and for others, no. Some skeptical scholars have stated that the only sure evidence of cannibalism would be the presence of human bone or other residues in coprolites (prehistoric fecal matter). There is no evidence of bone yet, but a recent analysis did identify human myoglobin in preserved human fecal matter from a 12th-century site in southwestern Colorado. Myoglobin proteins can only get into fecal matter through the ingestion of human flesh, and so this would seem to be certain evidence of cannibalism in this particular instance. Although some detractors have challenged these results as only preliminary and untested, the evidence is quite compelling FOR THAT PARTICULAR CASE. Until these myoglobin results are confirmed with additional testing and other sites exhibit similar evidence, the jury is still out on the frequency of cannibalism in the prehistoric Southwest and the debate continues. My own opinion is that the evidence is convincing. To me, however, the even more important question is: "WHY did this cannibalism take place?" I have published two articles on this issue, and my thoughts on the matter are that it was *not* about hunger, as the conventional wisdom holds, but rather about intimidation and revenge. Torture, corpse mutilation, and cannibalism are all extremely powerful ways to intimidate others, with the goal of exercising or establishing some power over them. In the Anasazi world, the best evidence for the most severe mutilations coincide with a time when sociopolitical competition was at a height, and I would argue that on rare occasions, this competition was highlighted by extraordinary acts of violence. Did the Anasazi children have toys with which to play games? This question brings up a topic usually passed over by archaeologists. One reason we tend to avoid it is that the identification of toys without any other cultural context is very difficult. For example, if I were to find the remains of a small doll, would I be able to conclude that it was a toy or was it instead an important religious idol used in ritual contexts? Without any additional information, I wouldn't be able to decide on either possibility. Given this caveat, there are artifacts recovered from Anasazi sites that are interpreted as toys. This includes tiny replicas of pottery, such as miniature bowls or jars. "Babes-in-cradles" are small clay figurines placed in curved pottery pieces. And a few archaeologists have argued that tiny arrowheads were toys as well. In many archaeological reports, lists of artifacts will include a variety of twig items that were likely toys, perhaps spontaneously made on the spot by children. It is likely that many if not most Anasazi toys were made of such organic materials that are only preserved in rare cases. Adult "toys" are often found in the form of gaming pieces: shaped stones, pottery, or bone that are assumed to have been used in gambling. Certainly the historic Pueblo Indians, the descendents of the Anasazi, used such items. Are there any new findings or evolving theories about the Anasazi? In other words, are there any interesting goings-on in archaeological research? The Southwest historically has been an important center for the development of both archaeological method and theory, and there are a number of interesting directions that various scholars are taking today. You might be interested in the following: The Santa Fe Institute, which is dedicated to the development and application of chaos and complexity theories in a variety of disciplines, has a few archaeologists associated with it. This includes George Gumerman, Tim Kohler, Jeffrey Dean, and Jonathan Haas. Kohler and Dean have been actively working on simulations that compare the predictions of complexity theory with actual events in Anasazi prehistory. Steve Lekson, who is at the University of Colorado, has recently proposed that Anasazi groups who lived in Chaco Canyon engaged in very long- distance migrations about once every century that followed meridian lines. He proposes that they first went up to Aztec along the San Juan River, and then some time later went south, all the way to Casas Grandes in Mexico. Cannibalism is a hot topic. Christy Turner and his late wife have for years been pointing to isolated cases of mutilation and cannibalism among the Anasazi. He is publishing a new book on the topic soon. Along the way, others have added their own voices to the debate, including Brian Billman, who is at the University of North Carolina, and myself. Research on Chaco Canyon has always garnered a lot of interest from the public, but of course I'm biased because this is my own focus. In my opinion, we're in the midst of a "paradigm shift" in which the emphasis is turning away from the image of the Anasazi as "peaceful, benign, and cooperative groups whose evolution depended exclusively on their relationship with the environment" to a view that they were just as self-interested, politically motivated, and even as violent as the rest of us humans. One issue that I think is very poorly understood is what exactly happened during the transition from the prehistoric Anasazi to the historic Pueblo Indians. Very little has been published on this, but some people who are working on it are Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer at the Field Museum in Chicago, and I think that Linda Cordell at the University of Colorado is starting up another major project on the topic. Finally, I think another important issue in the Southwest revolves around intellectual and cultural property rights and the interaction between archaeologists and Native Americans. The latter have been asserting their rights not only over actual prehistoric material, but also over the interpretation of this material, and ultimately on the role of scientific inquiry across cultural boundaries. What are some of the better books on the Anasazi and related history? Here are a couple of good books on Anasazi prehistory: Four Corners Anasazi : A Guide to Archeological Sites, by Rose Houk, Jim Fuge. San Juan National Forest Association, 1994. Kathryn Gabriel, Roads to Center Place: A Cultural Atlas of Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi, Johnson Books, 1991. Stephen Plog, Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest, Thames and Hudson, 1997. Linda Cordell, Archaeology of the Southwest, Academic Press, 1997. I've listed these in order from more accessible to more academic in tone. What in your opinion was the purpose of the prehistoric Chaco Anasazi roads and why do you think so? Although some scholars might disagree with me, my view is that the Chaco road system wasn't much of a "system"; in other words, unlike our society's road networks that allow you to go anywhere in the US, the Chaco roads were not all interconnected. The vast majority of roads were created simply by clearing away loose soil down to bedrock and perhaps lining them with some stones. Much more rarely, they cut into the bedrock to smooth out irregularities or built big ramps to go over hills. Most roadways during the Chacoan period were these little short segments that extended out from small great houses located in communities all over the northern Southwest. Most didn't really go very far; in fact, most didn't really "go" anywhere. My research has suggested that they were largely symbolic, much like the Mall in Washington, D.C. They were large formal roadways that were meant to emphasize the importance of great houses found in every community. Some of these little roadways extended off towards important natural features on the landscape, features that are still important to Native Americans living in the SW today. Other little roadways extended to older ruins, as if the Chaco people were making a symbolic link between their present and their past. Of course, when most people think of Chaco roadways, they think of the really big ones that extend from Chaco Canyon miles across the San Juan Basin. In my opinion, Chaco Canyon took the idea of little roads extending from little great houses, and it made it much much bigger, with huge roadways extending over huge areas, symbolically connecting the canyon with very large natural features on the landscape, again which are important in Native American oral histories. In Chaco Canyon, as in all the little communities located outside of the canyon, the roads almost always ended at a great house. For example, Pueblo Alto, located on the cliff above Pueblo Bonito, has about 4 roadways running to it. Just because the roads were largely symbolic doesn't mean people didn't walk on them. The roads were important routes for pilgrims heading to Chaco Canyon. But I'd argue that their size, their routes, and in fact their very existence can be explained more by Chaco Canyon's desire to dominate the landscape rather than their desire to provide pathways for people. A study that I did demonstrated that the roadways are not placed on the most efficient routes for traveling to Chaco; instead, the linearity and prominence of the roads were more important. On the Internet I've seen reference to four major divisions of the Anasazi while other pages have referred to three divisions. What do you think about this issue? I'd probably argue that there are five major divisions of the Anasazi: The Northern San Juan/Mesa Verde, Chaco Anasazi, the Rio Grande Anasazi, the Kayenta, and the Virgin Anasazi. Some people would include the Fremont of Utah as yet another division, but I wouldn't (while certainly the Fremont share many of the same cultural features as the Anasazi, their adaptation seems oriented towards greater mobility, a more diverse diet, and the accompanying social traits to facilitate this lifestyle). Others would focus on two major divisions: the Eastern and Western Pueblo, which reflects the division among the modern pueblos, and they would then place the groups I referred to above into these two major divisions. The problem, of course, is that these are all gross generalizations, and these days archaeologists don't like to engage in them, so you won't see many current references that focus on these divisions. You should be able to find lots of stuff on Chaco obviously, and there should be plenty on the Kayenta as well, especially focusing on the work that occurred at Black Mesa. For the Mesa Verde area, there's a ton of work that came out of the Dolores Archaeological Project. And Linda Cordell's work in Tijeras Canyon or the School of American Research's work at Arroyo Hondo provides a lot of insight into the Rio Grande Anasazi. The Virgin Anasazi are less well known, except through some publications by Dan Larson. Ultimately, though, these are really quite technical. I'm sitting here looking at some of the more general references, and the only one that really talks about these divisions is Linda Cordell's Archaeology of the Southwest, published by Academic Press and in its second edition. Stephen Plog's new book, Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest, is too general, as is Reid and Whittlesey's Archaeology of Ancient Arizona. Why do you continue to use the term "Anasazi," which many modern Pueblo protest because it is a Navajo word that is often interpreted to mean "ancient enemy"? Why not use the Hopi term "Hisatsinom"? As an archaeologist and someone who empathizes with many so-called "PC causes," it has been difficult for me to figure out the best way to deal with this issue. What's clear to me is that I need a somewhat short term (since it appears hundreds of times in my writings) to refer to the prehistoric society I study. The term "Anasazi" has, of course, been traditionally used by archaeologists and the general public and everyone knows what it refers to, even if everyone doesn't know what it means (the translation is debatable). The alternatives that have been proposed include "Hisatsinom," which is a Hopi word meaning "ancient ones"; and "Ancient Puebloans," which is, well, mostly Spanish. The first option isn't really acceptable, since even though the Hopi are obviously the descendents of some Anasazi, the Hopi are also likely descended from Mogollon, Sinagua, Salado, and/or Hohokam people as well. Plus, using a Hopi word would effectively deny ancestral linkages between the Anasazi and the Zuni, Tewa, Towa, Tiwa, probably Kiowa, etc. Of course, the word "Pueblo" is Spanish, and even though its translation does not mean "enemy," certainly the Spanish wreaked more havoc on the Hopi-Zuni-Tewa-Towa-Tiwa-Kiowa-Tano than anyone else, so I can't imagine how it could be more acceptable than "Anasazi." One solution has been to use the term "Ancient Puebloan People," using "Puebloan" to mean that they lived in Pueblos. One problem is that this then describes pretty much all Southwestern groups, and it therefore fails as a useful descriptive term at all. I could use "Ancient Puebloan People Who Lived in the Four Corners Area," but that is quite awkward to use! Another issue: Some Navajo have protested the disposal of the term "Anasazi" in favor of "Ancient Puebloan People" because they claim that this effectively denies that they have any Anasazi blood in them or cultural links, which they no doubt do. So, what's the solution? It's a mess, of course, leading one colleague to propose that we come up with some unpronounceable symbol and refer to them as the "people formally known as the Anasazi"... My tentative personal decision has been to retain the term "Anasazi," which has the widest recognition and most precedent in archaeology. How long were the Anasazi around until they disappeared? What do you think was the reason the Anasazi left their homes? Do you think it was drought, war or something else? The Anasazi never disappeared. However, at varying times throughout their very long history, they did go through periods of rapid abandonment and migration. Because they left behind so many ruins and artifacts, it *looks* like they disappeared. But, actually, the "Anasazi" still live in the Southwest today. When the Spanish first arrived in New Mexico, they found a large number of villages inhabited by people that they called the "Pueblo," which is the Spanish word for "village." Ever since then, we've known these people as the Pueblo, even though they obviously have names for themselves in their own languages. Both Pueblo Indians and archaeologists recognize that the Pueblo are the direct descendents of the Anasazi. One of the biggest challenges facing archaeologists today is trying to reconstruct the many migrations that took place in prehistory, so that we can figure out exactly how the Anasazi became the Pueblo. Archaeologists have been able to trace the lineage of modern Pueblo people, back through the Anasazi, to Archaic foragers who inhabited the Colorado Plateau 2,000 years ago. In turn, these Archaic foragers are related to Paleoindian groups who used atlatls and spears to hunt bison and mammoth. Ultimately, of course, these people came to the Americas from the Old World, most likely across the Bering Land Bridge 15,000-30,000 years ago. I guess the answer to the second part of your question depends on which "abandonment" one is talking about. At numerous points and in many places in the long history of the Anasazi, people picked up and left their homes, sometimes moving great distances. And usually they left for different reasons. So, for example, the abandonment of Chaco Canyon in the mid-1100s does occur during a drought, but it was not a very impressive drought and I think this abandonment can only be understood by looking at the way that the Chaco people were organized. In my work (and that of others as well), I've argued that the Chaco tradition revolved around influential religious leaders whose power was largely based in their ability to predict and control the weather; after all, the 900s and 1000s had been pretty good to everyone. You can imagine that when the droughts of the 1100s came, even though they were minor, people would have been disappointed in their Chacoan leaders, who apparently could no longer control the rainfall! With their leaders perhaps looking more and more ineffective, people slowly began to move away to other, better watered areas. When most people talk about Anasazi abandonments, they are usually referring to the major movements that took place beginning in the late 1200s. There is no doubt in most scholar's minds that The Great Drought encouraged these abandonments. Associated with this chaotic period is lots of evidence of warfare, but it seems likely that this was encouraged by the tough times that people were experiencing. For the next few hundred years--really, up until the Spanish arrived in 1540--the climate was not very favorable to the Anasazi, and people moved around a lot! A bunch of different migrating groups would move to a relatively well-watered area, perhaps by a stream or spring, and they'd live there together for a while before things got tough again, and then they'd migrate on. Some scholars would argue that at about the time the Spanish arrived, the climate was beginning to get better and Anasazi society was likely beginning to change yet again, with places like Pecos near Santa Fe rapidly growing in regional power and influence. Unfortunately, the introduction of European diseases and violence severely impacted Anasazi/Puebloan society and culture, leading to the final series of abandonments and migrations as the surviving Pueblo people aggregated into the villages where many still live today. I had always understood that there was no actual proof of the Anasazi people's lineage. You seem to assert that the modern-day Pueblo culture is a direct outgrowth. What is the basis for this theory? Do the present day Pueblo cultures agree? Has any DNA evidence been found that proves this relationship? "Proof" is always a touchy subject for archaeologists, as it should be for all scientists. Since we can't directly observe that the Anasazi became the modern Pueblo, we have to look to see what the preponderance of evidence suggests. In this case, we can see that the Anasazi and the historic Pueblo lived in the same kinds of structures, they practiced their religion in the same kinds of underground kivas, they grew the same plants, made pottery the same way, and so on. The conclusion is that the Anasazi are the ancestors of the Pueblo. I don't know of any archaeologists working in the Southwest who would suggest otherwise. And certainly the Pueblo Indians assert that they descended from the prehistoric inhabitants of the Colorado Plateau, and in many cases their oral histories include important Anasazi sites. Regarding DNA testing, we first need to clarify the difference between cultural relationships and biological relationships, which is what of course DNA testing would evaluate. Despite the tendency in our society to equate the two together, cultural traits and biological traits are quite distinct. For example, if we were to do DNA testing on modern Pueblo and ancient Anasazi samples, no doubt the samples would be quite similar. But we also would find DNA signatures relating the modern Pueblo to the Navajo, Spanish, Anglo, Hasidic Jews, and all the other biological populations that have passed through the SW over the past several hundred years. How close would the Pueblo have to be to the Anasazi samples to affirm that they are descendents? What if, for example, the particular Pueblo person you sampled actually had a high proportion of Mexican Indian since the Spanish brought up indigenous people from Mexico when they conquered the SW? Would that mean that that Pueblo person was culturally more similar to the Zapotecs or Aztec than to the Anasazi? Absolutely not. Of course, if no genetic marker from the Anasazi were found in the living Pueblo, that might require us to revise our view of the past. But that would beg the question as to how you determine a specific genetic marker that would be unique to the Anasazi. I'm no geneticist, but it seems to me that you'd have to sample a heck of a lot of Anasazi skeletal material to determine what is uniquely "Anasazi" before you could look at any Pueblo samples; i.e., which genetic variations are simply part of the random noise present in all populations and which are unique to that prehistoric population? Unfortunately, to further complicate matters, there are many different groups of Pueblo Indians, and similarly there were many different groups of Anasazi, each of which possessed certain cultural attributes that distinguished them from their neighbors. There is considerable controversy as to which modern Pueblo groups are descended from which prehistoric Anasazi society. Did people from Chaco Canyon migrate south and eventually become the Zuni? Did the inhabitants of the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde eventually settle on the Rio Grande and become the Tewa? To complicate matters, we know that the prehistoric Mogollon people, who lived in the area south of the Colorado Plateau, are also likely the ancestors of the Pueblo, no doubt along with a few Hohokam people from southern Arizona. We are only now beginning to gain an understanding of all of the migrations and sociocultural changes that took place in the years before the Spanish arrived. I hope this clarifies these complex issues. I wish I could report with certainty that there was proof that the Chaco became the Zuni, etc., but we just don't have those answers yet! Did The Anasazi have a written language of any kind or keep any records of their life? What language was spoken? No, the Anasazi did not have any written language; in fact, none of the prehistoric inhabitants of North America above Mexico had any writing in the sense of being able to convey complex messages using a common set of known symbols. However, the Anasazi did leave behind a lot of rock art: petroglyphs pecked or carved into rock and pictographs painted onto rock. The images are most often representative rather than completely abstract, although abstract forms do appear, and many of the images appear to represent unreal entities. Anasazi rock art no doubt had important meanings to the Anasazi, and may have even been used to convey various messages. However, determining these meanings is a very difficult task for archaeologists. A few scholars have pursued innovative studies in which living Pueblo descendents of the Anasazi are queried for rock art meanings, under the assumption that Pueblo interpretations of the symbols would be very similar to the Anasazi's own meanings. Using this approach, for example, specific symbols have been associated with specific Pueblo clans, which in turn suggests that the Anasazi were using the symbols to indicate similar clan organizations. This approach has its problems, but it is so far the best way to interpret what the Anasazi might have been conveying with their rock art (besides saying "it sort of looks like a bug, or an alien, or whatever"!). In a similar vein, there are also various symbols that the Anasazi used on pottery or basketry. In many cases, these are same symbols that are seen in the rock art, and accordingly attempts to interpret them have relied on direct analogy between the living Pueblos and their Anasazi ancestors. Regarding the spoken language of the Anasazi, the probable descendents of the Anasazi--the Pueblo Indians who live in the Southwest today--speak a variety of different languages, some of which are not related to one another at all. The problem is that in prehistoric times, just as today, people moved around a lot, and during some particularly momentous times, there were mass migrations that often brought people from other regions into the northern Southwest where they began to live with the Anasazi. So, for example, the Zuni Indians of today may speak a language that has its roots in southern Arizona among non-Anasazi people. The Hopi, similarly, may have gained their language through in-migration of people from the Great Basin area of Utah and Nevada. This is an area of research that is still wide open! Why did they make all those weird carvings on rocks and what do they mean? This is a hard question to answer. Regarding "why", there are many theories. Some scholars believe that they are symbols that convey important information regarding village boundaries, farming field ownership, and other basic messages (many written languages begin in such a way). Other scholars argue that they are symbols that were pecked or carved into rock faces during important rituals. And still other archaeologists believe that they are just "doodles." The rock art images are most often representative rather than abstract, although abstract forms do appear, and many of the images appear to represent unreal entities. Anasazi rock art no doubt had important meanings to the Anasazi, and may have even been used to convey simple messages. However, determining these meanings is a very difficult task for archaeologists. A few scholars have pursued innovative studies in which living Pueblo descendents of the Anasazi are queried for rock art meanings, under the assumption that Pueblo interpretations of the symbols would be very similar to the Anasazi's own meanings. Using this approach, for example, specific symbols have been associated with specific Pueblo clans, which in turn suggests that the Anasazi were using the symbols to indicate similar clan organizations. This approach of course has its problems, but it is so far the best way to interpret what the Anasazi might have been conveying with their rock art (besides saying "it sort of looks like a bug, or an alien, or whatever"!). How did the Anasazi live in such a hot place? If you've ever been to the Colorado Plateau, you'd realize that it's not exactly a desert (in fact, they've already had snow there this year!). The environment is what's called a "high desert," and it's considerably wetter and cooler than the Sonoran desert in southern Arizona or the Mojave in California. Still, it is dry enough that farming is a challenge, especially since the winters can be long and cold. Another problem with high deserts is that the weather patterns are very unstable; some years may have lots of rain, while there may be a period of many years where there is barely any rain at all. These challenges no doubt shaped Anasazi culture in many interesting ways, from the necessity to develop cooperative relationships with neighbors, to the focus of many of their religious activities on rituals calling for rain. What did the Anasazi use to dye their cotton and, later we understand, wool? In one book on Native American crafts we saw a black and red "Mantas" attributed to Pueblo people. Basic on analogy with historic Pueblo (the descendents of the Anasazi) and Navajo (who learned weaving from the Anasazi) groups, the Anasazi likely used the following for dyes: yellow = rabbitbrush or ochre black = sumac or charcoal blue = azurite red = iron oxide These colors could be mixed together to make others. No doubt other plants, roots, and minerals were used, and in some cases even human hair or dog hair was woven in to add more black or brown color. Note that most of the blankets ("mantas") you see in books are historic or modern pieces, and these are usually made of commercially dyed wools. Such dyes produce some of the brighter colors that can't be produced with the natural dyes. Where can I get population estimates for different time periods at Chaco Canyon? I'm afraid to say that you will have some difficulty finding population estimates for Chaco Canyon. There is substantial disagreement regarding how many people lived in Chaco Canyon architectural features. In general, estimating population has always been rife with controversy. In the case of Chaco, the dispute centers on whether the great houses were domestic structures or empty ritual architecture. The debate is further exacerbated by the strange lack of burials associated with great houses, as well as the lack of recent research in most of the canyon structures. And population levels during abandonment periods are even harder to reconstruct; what is there to use to measure numbers of people? During abandonments, structures do not reduce in size to reflect the reduction in population. And without burials or microstratigraphic midden analyses, there is little else to go by. Your best bet is to look at the Pueblo Alto publications, put out by the National Park Service, edited by Tom Windes, and dating to 1987. Tom Windes has a 1984 publication in an edited volume by Judge and Schelberg titled Recent Research on Chaco Prehistory; Windes' chapter covers population estimates. I believe that Gwinn Vivian's chapter in the Chaco and Hohokam volume (1991, School of American Research Press) also discusses population. Can you tell me something about Anasazi religion? Determining the exact features of a prehistoric religion is a very difficult feat for archaeologists, as many of the relevant details are not preserved in archaeological sites. Those of us who study the Anasazi tend to look to their modern descendents, the Pueblo Indians, to get clues as to the beliefs of their Anasazi ancestors. In general, the Anasazi probably did not believe in a single "God" like that in many Western religions. Instead, they believed in a large number of supernatural entities or deities that had important roles in Pueblo history; for example, they helped and/or hindered the migration of the Pueblos from the underworld to the upper world. Perhaps more importantly, Pueblo religion (and therefore likely Anasazi religion too) contends that the spirits of the dead frequently move between the two worlds. When someone dies, their spirit goes to the underworld (don't confuse this with our vision of "Hell"; the underworld is just like the upperworld), but then they are reborn as new babies. Spirits of the dead are also central to the so-called "Kachina cult"; the Kachinas are considered to be mediators who communicate between the living and the deities, and many rituals in modern Pueblo religion are focused on this communication with Kachinas. Archaeologists have found that the Kachina cult probably emerged relatively late in Anasazi prehistory. Remember too that just like there are many different versions of Christianity, there are also many significant differences between the different Pueblo societies, and this was likely also true for their Anasazi ancestors. Is there any evidence that the Anasazi played sports similar to soccer? We have not found much evidence that the Anasazi engaged in formalized team sports, at least not compared to other nearby societies. For example, the Hohokam in southern Arizona built ballcourts very similar to those seen further south in Mexico. The Anasazi apparently did not engage in sports that required specially-made playing fields. However, based on analogy with the Pueblo Indians, the Anasazi's descendents, it's likely that the Anasazi did play a game similar to our "shinny" or field hockey. And they very regularly engaged in foot-races, many of which accompanied important ceremonial events and took place between clans of a number of villages. At historic Zuni, one of the Pueblo groups living in New Mexico, other sporting events consisted of throwing "darts" at balls of yucca, sort of like our game of lawn darts. Other games include one in which a "shuttlecock" was bounced off the hands as many times as possible, like our hacky-sack (except with hands instead of feet); a game that is like a cross of our wall-ball and red-rover; and stick and hoop games. But historic Pueblos never had a game like soccer (that I've ever heard of), and there is no evidence that their ancestors did either. Was the road system associated with Chaco Canyon used for transporting goods to and from Mesoamerica? The quantity of material entering Chaco Canyon from Mesoamerica is really quite small--feathers, copper bells, and shell being the most prominent (although shell also came via the Hohokam from the Gulf of California). The conventional wisdom is that these items are not *directly* being exchanged with Mesoamerican groups; ie, there were not traders who walked back and forth the entire distance between the two areas. Rather, the common view is that these materials were "down-the-line" trade, casually exchanged from neighbor to neighbor and eventually ending up in Chaco and other areas. It's hard to evaluate whether this view is correct or not, but there is some evidence to suggest that it is. For example, someone once estimated that if you took all of the bells and birds and feathers brought into the Chaco world, and put them all together, they could have been brought to the area using only a single trader making only a few trips. So, there is no reason to build a road system just for this purpose. Plus, of course, the roads only go out relatively short distances from Chaco out to the peripheries of the San Juan Basin; they don't even remotely begin to reach Mesoamerica or even to other groups in the Southwest, such as the Hohokam and Mimbres. The more reasonable interpretation would be that the roads were designed to transport basic resources such as corn and wood from peripheral areas to Chaco Canyon itself. My work demonstrated that the roads were not designed to make it easier to move between Chacoan communities. Instead, they seem to reflect religious and/or other local integrative functions. Of course, food and other material could have also moved along them, but it simply does not appear that they were originally intended to minimize economic effort. How did the Anasazi dress? Because cloth, sandal fibers, and leather do not preserve especially well, we find it somewhat difficult to determine what the Anasazi wore. However, in especially dry areas, such as caves, some pieces of clothing have been recovered. We've found that the Anasazi used lots of different kinds of clothing, and just as we have lots of different styles represented in our society, so did they. And the kinds of clothing changed over time. Yucca fibers were used by many populations to make some clothing, especially sandals. And these fibers, along with animal sinew, could be used to sew other kinds of clothing, such as shirts and loincloths made of animal hides and furs; we still find large numbers of bone needles. And about 1,000 years ago, cotton began to be grown in the northern Southwest and accordingly we find clothing and blankets made from this material during the last millennium. All clothing was decorated in various ways all over the Anasazi world, using natural dyes made from plants and local minerals. The Anasazi produced cloth from cotton using a variety of weaving techniques. These fabrics could be decorated, some quite ornately, either with paints or even with embroidery. Most designs are abstract geometric designs that in many cases are similar to what you see on the Anasazi pottery. Types of clothing include shirt- and dress-like items, as well as simple loincloths that would have been used during the warmer months. Clothing made of fur and leather has also been identified and were likely used during the colder months; it does snow in many parts of the Anasazi's world. Other items of dress include fiber armbands, sandals made of yucca fiber, and lots of jewelry of turquoise, shell, and stone beads. Did the Anasazi have anything to do with science? An interesting question indeed, and one that is not easy to answer because different people define "science" in different ways. The most fundamental definition of science is "the observation, identification, description, and theoretical explanation of phenomena". In other words, science involves observing the world and developing explanations of how it works. An important part of science is that ideas about how things work are constantly being revised as new observations of the world are made. In this respect, the Anasazi, like all humans, were scientists. There is lots of evidence that shows that they would observe their world and develop ideas of how it worked. These ideas could then be used to help them survive better in their semi-arid environment. For example, the Anasazi experimented a lot with different ways of growing food. Often this involved careful observations of how different plants grew and reproduced, and the Anasazi could then use these observations to alter their farming techniques or even to genetically change the plants themselves. Many Anasazi groups were expert observers of the sky, in some cases even building "solar observatories" in order to predict major seasonal indicators such as solstices or equinoxes. So, although the Anasazi didn't have laboratories or test tubes or white jackets with pocket protectors, they were expert scientists whose observations and experiments allowed them to thrive in a place where few people are able to live today. Do you know of any chiefs or leaders of the Anasazi? That's a tough question to answer. It's like asking, "Who was the leader of North Americans for the last 300 years." The Anasazi consisted of many different societies that shared some common cultural characteristics, and in different times and places they had different kinds of leaders. We think, however, that leaders were not especially powerful, but were only able to persuade people based on how good their ideas were and how much people respected them. Therefore, many of their leaders were ritual specialists--their priests--for they lived in both the natural world and the spiritual world, and were believed to be able to influence the climate and the success of crops. In a few cases in the long history of the Anasazi, some of these "theocrats" were able to develop greater levels of authority than at other times, but never were they comparable to powerful chiefs found in other prehistoric societies. Their authority hinged on their success: the bounty of the crops, the frequency of rainfall, the fertility of animals and people. We do not know of many specific individuals who were leaders, but there are a few who have been identified. For example, at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, northwestern NM, two burials were found that clearly indicated that these individuals were high-status individuals; they included thousands of beads and other objects of turquoise and shell, an elaborate crypt, and the burials were in a special structure. A few similar burials have been found elsewhere, many associated with the Chaco Anasazi, a society that arose between A.D. 900 and 1150, but others that lived during later time periods. What was the role of men in Anasazi society? That is a somewhat difficult question to answer. Based on what we know of the Pueblos, who are the living descendents of the Anasazi, men did most of the heavy labor, such as building houses, preparing and planting fields, and hunting, while women did much of the home maintenance, including plastering and cleaning, they prepared food (which often required several hours a day just grinding the corn), and, of course, they were responsible for child care. Men were also responsible for the ceremonial life of the family and spent a considerable amount of time preparing for or participating in community ritual activities. Women probably did not have as important a role in the ceremonial events, although they did participate in some and often prepared food for participants in community rituals. The important point here is that although the Pueblos have these gender roles today, their Anasazi descendents may have done things a bit differently. Archaeologists are still trying to determine to what degree the ancient Anasazi were similar to their Pueblo descendents. What kind of government did the Anasazi have? The Anasazi probably had a political system that for the most part focused on the headmen of large kin groups such as lineages. These headmen would have been the most knowledgeable and prestigious--and often older--men in each lineage, and the headman of the most powerful and oldest lineage would likely be the leader of a specific village. And because the Anasazi lived in an environment that made farming challenging, headmen probably also had some religious authority and were in charge of important rituals and ceremonies. Relationships between villages were probably very fluid and flexible, with villages sometimes forming alliances with one another, but these alliances were probably rarely very long-lasting, and competition between villages would have also been common, although this was rarely manifested as violent conflict. Much of the political life was focused on village or multivillage ceremonial events that included feasts arranged by powerful headmen with the support of their lineages and other allies. Why are there so many pottery sherds at Anasazi archaeological sites? You have to keep in mind a number of points. First, trash piles once consisted of all kinds of junk, but much of it decayed over the years so that now all we see are the "hard" things such as pottery. And, second, these trash piles were accumulated over many, many years. Imagine that a cliff dwelling was lived in by two families, each with 8 members. Just through cooking and storing and moving pots to and fro, each person had to have broken at least one pot per year, and probably more (imagine carrying the pots up and down the cliff constantly to get water). That's a total of 16 pots per year, and let's say that each ultimately broke into 50 pieces, for a total of 800 pieces per year. After a couple of generations of occupying the same site, you'd have 40,000 pieces!! And that would be a relatively small cliff dwelling. Is there anything in history that would indicate when the first white man "met" the Anasazi? We know from historic documents that the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca and 3 others, who had been shipwrecked off Texas in 1528, probably encountered some Anasazi people as they wandered from Texas into New Mexico and then back down into Mexico. In 1539, Fray Marcos de Niza definitely visited Anasazi villages, such as the ancestral Zuni site of Hawikuh. The Spanish called the Anasazi the "Pueblo" (Spanish for "village") because they were living in large aggregated villages, and that's the name that is often used for the living descendents of the Anasazi. Why put cliff dwellings such as those at Mesa Verde in such hard to reach places? The cliff dwellings such as those found at Mesa Verde are indeed mysterious. There are a few hypotheses that are tossed around these days as to why the Anasazi built their homes in these alcoves: First and foremost, folks moved into the cliffs because they were much easier to defend against the raiding and violence that seems to have characterized this time in Anasazi prehistory. The 1200s, when cliff dwellings were being built all over the northern SW, was a particularly unstable time exacerbated by deteriorating climatic conditions, and retreating to these alcoves was likely in response to increasing violence. However, not everyone during these time periods lived in the cliffs; other people responded in different ways. Another hypothesis is that people wanted to move close to but not on top of their fields at the bottoms of the canyons and on the canyon rims. The third hypothesis is that the cliff dwellings were initially created as an expression of some new religious ideology, not unlike how kivas were built into the ground to represent an attachment to the spirit world below the surface of the earth. The current trend in data is favoring the first hypothesis, and would certainly explain why people would put so much effort into constructing their homes and living in such inaccessible places. What was the average lifespan of the Anasazi Indians and also their average height? That's a hard question to answer, as that's like asking what the average height or lifespan of an Anglo-European is; it's different in different populations, and it's changed substantially over time. The Anasazi and their Pueblo descendents have existed for about two millennia, and in different places at different times their heights and lifespans were different. Having said that, I'd guess that the average lifespan was in the early to middle 30s, which is a bit misleading; deaths were high for infants and children, pushing the average lifespan down, but if you survived childhood, you would likely live into your early 50s, and a few individuals were much older when they passed away. Regarding height, that too is highly variable through time and space. Ann Stodder, a bioarchaeologist at the Field Museum of Chicago who specializes on the prehistoric Southwest, tells me that females averaged 5'0" (153 cm) in height, while males averaged 5'4" (163 cm). The tallest males, whose remains were recovered from Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, reached around 5'7" in height; the shortest males, at 5'2", came from Salmon Ruin in what is now northwestern New Mexico. There's lots of study of pottery redistribution between Anasazi sites -- often involving considerable quantities of pottery and large distances. What motivated this? the first thing to clarify is that pottery did not move very frequently across the Anasazi region, with the one major exception of pottery that was imported into Chaco Canyon. It would be inappropriate, therefore, to call pottery exchange in the Southwest a form of "redistribution," in which pottery or whatever else is collected at one location and then redistributed back out again. That didn't happen in the Anasazi southwest. Instead, pottery and other stuff went to Chaco Canyon and stayed there, which supports the contention that Chaco was a pilgrimage center, with pilgrims bringing a pot or two, perhaps filled with grain or turquoise or whatever, and then leaving their offerings in the canyon, taking nothing material in return. It does seem inefficient to carry grain around in pottery, although that's how corn was stored, so perhaps the pilgrims, before leaving home, picked up one of their storage pots filled with corn, secured it in a pack, and then hiked up to Chaco Canyon. Chaco Canyon may have also requested that these hypothesized pilgrims bring empty pots. Chaco, with its lack of wood, may have had a difficult time firing their own pottery, so perhaps they solicited pots from their pilgrims, even targeting people from specific areas that produced superior pottery. In fact, most pottery imported into the canyon came from the Chuska Mountains to the west, where they used a unique tempering material that may have made for better pots. It does seem hard to imagine people hefting pots across the San Juan Basin, but then again people during those times were accustomed to engaging in activities that we simply don't do anymore, such as hiking 20 miles a day.

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