Mesa Verde National Park - The First Pueblos

During the two centuries after the Basketmakers had settled in Mesa Verde, they acquired a new and very important item: the bow and arrow. This made hunting easier and much more efficient, and so more time could be spent tending crops. Beans were added to the staple crops of corn and squash. With a stable food supply their way of life changed, as farming gradually replaced hunting. By the middle of the eighth century, the Anasazi began to congregate in larger settlements and to build structures above ground. With this act they entered a period that scientists call Developmental Pueblo.

The boxy frameworks of these houses were wooden poles, and the substance of the walls was a mixture of sticks, stones, and lots of mud. From these materials were created large houses that were one story high and many rooms long -- some stretched on for 150 feet. When a new room was needed, it was simply built onto the end of the line. Rapidly developing their extraordinary skills as masons, their construction technique advanced from mud plastered over a wood frame to finely constructed stone masonry with blocks shaped to corners and curved walls.

The old ways were not entirely forgotten, however; some became tradition. Near its long rowhouse each clan dug a pit room, similar to the old pit houses but deeper and more solidly built. To allow for air moment, each included a small tunnel at floor level which connected to a vertical air shaft. These pit rooms were workshops and meeting rooms for members of the clan, and it was in them that religious activities took place.
In the springtime, when food reserves were dwindling after long and sometimes snowy winters, it was important to get crops started early. The farmers found through experimentation that, by building small dams of stones across intermittent watercourses, they could hold the moisture of the melting snow in the soil. These were places where early corn could survive until summer rains began to fall, and over the years hundreds of these check dams were built.

More and more land came to be devoted to agriculture, and the population spread out over many of the long, slender mesas that make up Mesa Verde. All summer long, farmers went daily to the fields carrying their digging sticks -- oblong pieces of juniper wood that were sharpened at one end and rounded at the other. Most extensive farming was done on the mesa tops, which the Indians cleared by cutting pinyon and juniper for wood. Some land was also cleared by forest fires. Dogs and turkeys had been domesticated, and turkey feathers were twisted around yucca cordage to make blankets for the winter. Traders brought cotton from the south, and the weaving of cloth was added to the list of crafts.

Pottery making all but replaced basketry. It was a time-consuming process. Clay had to be gathered, mixed with temper so it would not crack when it was fired, carefully shaped one coil at a time, smoothed, decorated, and fired. A fresh, developing craft, pottery making was open to self-expression, and potters experimented with shapes, sizes, and forms. There were large mugs, narrow-necked jugs, shallow bowls and dishes, animal-shaped vessels, and small whimsical pieces that may have been the work of youngsters learning the art.

Most of all, it was the decoration -- black designs on a white background -- that marked a piece as a product of the Mesa Verde Anasazi. The work of some potters was distinguished by the figures of lizards, centipedes, birds, and mammals, but geometric patterns were by far the commonest. For centuries, most potters made their black paint from minerals, such as hematite and other ochers, but early in the 11th century someone tried boiling plants to make a thick paint. This worked better, and so after A.D. 1050 plants became a far more popular source -- the Rocky Mountain bee plant yielded a particularly good black. One type of pottery, however, used mostly for cooking, was left unpainted. We call it corrugated ware because of its rough other surface, made by pinching the soft clay coils before firing.