Anasazi People

The Anasazi People

    The Anasazi people were Native Americans who had a distinct and interesting culture.   The type of dwellings they built and lived in and the places where they put their villages were unique. The pottery and other artifacts found at their archaeological ruin sites are another part of this special culture.
    The type of structures that the Anasazi lived in changed between A.D. 500 to 1300. The earlier Anasazi built small villages of pithouses, which were small square living rooms dug into the ground, on top of mesas. Each pithouse had a small attached room for storage and a fire pit.   They later lived in pueblos, which were larger villages. These pueblos were made up of above -ground square rooms that were attached to each other. Each room was built out of four wood poles and adobe, which is a mud brick (“Crow Canyon”). Inside these communities were a few deep pithouses that were used for gatherings and for rituals. These pithouses later developed into kivas which were big round underground rooms located in the centers of the villages and used for gatherings and for religious and spiritual ceremonies. These Ancestral Puebloans began to build larger villages of attached dwellings of stone masonry with large kivas,   like the ones in the Lowry Ruin.   The kivas in this 50 unit village had plastered walls which were decorated with geometric designs. These indians also built multilevel structures and towers. The ruins in Hovenweep are a good example of this. These three and four story towers are square, oval, circular, and D-shaped. It looked like a castle (“History Colorado”). The type of dwellings that the Anasazi lived in improved a lot over time. The square rooms dug in the ground grew into huge villages and towns of stone apartments, hundreds of attached units, meeting areas and towers. The Mitchell Springs Ruins are the only ones found where structures from Pueblo I, II, and III architectural periods are found, one on top of the other...