Mesa Verde National Park | Exploring American Best-Preserved Ancestral Archeological Sites

Mesa Verde National Park is a cliff dwelling now an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado.

The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States.

Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres (21,240 ha) near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest.

With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States.

Mesa Verde (Spanish for “green table”) is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America.

Starting c. 7500 BC Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex.

The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rock shelters in and around the mesa.

By 1000 BC, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 AD the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture.

The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash.

They built the mesa’s first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known.

By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including the Rio Chama, the Rio Grande Valley, the Pajarito Plateau, and Santa Fe.

Early inhabitants

The first occupants of the Mesa Verde region, which spans from southeastern Utah to northwestern New Mexico, were nomadic Paleo-Indians who arrived in the area c. 9500 BC.

They followed herds of big game and camped near rivers and streams, many of which dried up as the glaciers that once covered parts of the San Juan Mountains receded.

After 9600 BC, the area’s environment grew warmer and drier, a change that brought to central Mesa Verde pine forests and the animals that thrive in them.

6000 BC marks the beginning of the Archaic period in North America.

Archaeologists differ as to the origin of the Mesa Verde Archaic population; some believe they developed exclusively from local Paleo-Indians, called the Foothills Mountain Complex, but others suggest that the variety of projectile points found in Mesa Verde indicates influence from surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley.

The Archaic people probably developed locally but were also influenced by contact, trade, and intermarriage with immigrants from these outlying areas.

The early Archaic people living near Mesa Verde utilized the atlatl and harvested a wider variety of plants and animals than the Paleo-Indians had while retaining their primarily nomadic lifestyle.

With the introduction of corn to the Mesa Verde region c. 1000 BC and the trend away from nomadism toward permanent pithouse settlements, the Archaic Mesa Verdeans transitioned into what archaeologists call the Basketmaker culture.

Basketmaker people are characterized by their combination of foraging and farming skills, use of the atlatl, and creation of finely woven baskets in the absence of earthen pottery. By 300, corn had become the preeminent staple of the Basketmaker people’s diet, which relied less and less on wild food sources and more on domesticated crops.

In addition to the fine basketry for which they were named, the Basketmaker people fashioned a variety of household items from plant and animal materials, including sandals, robes, pouches, mats, and blankets.

Basketmaker people are also known for their distinctive rock art, which can be found throughout Mesa Verde.

They depicted animals and people, in both abstract and realistic forms, in single works and more elaborate panels.

750 marks the end of the Basketmaker Era and the beginning of the Pueblo period.

The transition is characterized by major changes in the design and construction of buildings and the organization of household activities.

Pueblo people doubled their capacity for food storage from one year to two and built interconnected, year-round residences called pueblos.

Today, Mesa Verde is best known for a large number of well-preserved cliff dwellings, houses built in alcoves, or rock overhangs along the canyon walls.

The structures contained within these alcoves were mostly blocks of hard sandstone, held together and plastered with adobe mortar.

Specific constructions had many similarities but were generally unique in form due to the individual topography of different alcoves along the canyon walls.

Mesa Verde boasts a number of mesa-top ruins which are now open to public access including the Far View Complex and Cedar Tree Tower on Chapin Mesa, and Badger House Community, on Wetherill Mesa.