Southwest Culture Area The Anasazi ca. 2100 BP and 700 BP

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Southwest Culture Area
The Anasazi
ca. 2100 BP and 700 BP
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The Anasazi

• Ancestors of the Pueblo People

Anasazi bowl
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Anasazi
Town Dwellers

• Anasazi a Navajo word
• Pre-Columbian Civilization
• ca. 2100 BP and 700 BP
• ? disappearance ?

Chetro Ketl
Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde
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Anasazi and Pueblo

• Ancestors to contemporary Puebloan peoples
• ethnographic analogy
• Why such change?
• Transitioned into
• smaller-scale society

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Economy / Subsistence
Corn cribs

• Farming
• Three sisters
• Dry farming

• Corn
• Intensive processing and preparation
• Evidence of extreme arthritis

Mano and Metate
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Social Organization

• Matrilineal
• Lineage elders held significant power
• Elder Chief
• Kinsmen pay tribute
• Work collectively
• Surplus
• Elaborate ritual etc.

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Roads Evidence of extensive trade, or something
else?

• social organization / stratification
• Trade routes (?)
• Religious/Political service (?)
• Both (?)
• Regulation
• Valley of Mexico (?)
• Turquoise
• Obsidian (?)

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Theocracy

• Rule by priests
• Calendric rituals
• Time keepers
• Chiefs Priest upper stratum of society
• Tribute

Astronomy

• Architectural features suggest observatories
• Prior to architectural forms, natural features
  were used to mark passage of sun or celestial
  objects
• Timing and scheduling
• Control the calendar control the society

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Cosmology

• Layered universe
• Upper world is permanent
• sacredness is to transport between worlds
• Sipapu opening
• Four worlds
• Each ends in catastrophe
• 4th (present) world

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Kachinas

• Emerge from 3rd world via sipapu
• Not dolls but masked figures
• Represent sacred beings
• kachina figurines
• assist memory

Kachina in rock painting?
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Ritual Calendric

• return of the sun after solstice
• rainy summer season.
• Hopi snake dance
• Anasazi not exactly the same, but quite similar
  to modern Pueblo peoples.

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Rock Art
Kokapelli and Friends
Hunting Magic?
? hands 6-toed feet ?
Sacred contact? Sipapu?
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Kiva

• Provides point of contact
• Emergence of sacred beings
• Sipapu
• Originally humans re-emerge after death
• Coyote covered it up.

Anasazi kiva (reconstruction)
Kiva at Chaco Canyon
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Kiva-archaeology

• Basketmaker phase lived in pit houses
• many groups continued to live in pit houses.
• Anasazi developed pueblo-style housing
• retain kivas as ritual space

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KivaGender and Society

• Secular as well as Sacred space
• Two sacred periods
• winter and summer
• Remaining secular periods
• mens club.
• foster solidarity among adult men
• Some women allowed on occasion
• uncommon
• Women of childbearing age generally kept out.