Site History: Mesa Verde Prehistory
by Kathleen Fiero, NPS

On the Mesa Verde tree-ring dates from a prehispanic context range from A.D. 600 to 1280. The earliest dates are from pithouse villages. Semi-subterranean pithouses are associated with outdoor storage units, hearths and work areas. Through time this type of housing arrangement is replaced by contiguous surface roomblocks of storage and habitation rooms associated with subterranean ceremonial structures called kivas. Jacal and stone-slab construction gives way to shaped-stone construction. The plastered earthen pithouse evolves into the stone-lined and plastered kiva. The curved row of storage and habitation rooms becomes the U-shaped unit pueblo made up of habitation and storage rooms, and a kiva (or kivas) in the central courtyard. By the early 13th century most if not all of these unit pueblos are found singlely and in clusters in the natural alcoves of the Mesa Verde--villages that have come to be called cliff dwellings. Mug House and Cliff Palace are two of these.

Through this whole sequence, the basic unit of construction and social organization is the household. Through the 700 years of occupation of Mesa Verde, including the cliff dwelling period, site size remains variable with small single family sites as well as multi-family units. Besides these typical occupation sites, special purpose sites are also found. Circular subterranean great kivas are associated with clusters of sites possibly as early at A.D. 600. Water control features are poorly dated but pervasive across the Mesa Verde: check dams in drainages, rock lined terraces, and, possibly as early as A.D. 1100, water reservoirs. Towers found in association with kivas come in isolated units and as part of larger pueblos by A.D. 1000. At the time of the cliff dwellings, at least two large rectangular open spaces, defined on either end by massive two-story roomblocks, were constructed in alcoves (Long House, Fire Temple) and the D-shaped planned structure known as Sun Temple was built.

In Mesa Verde the thirteenth century cliff dwellings (more properly "alcove sites" but the term "cliff dwelling" has been in the literature for over 100 years and will be used here) are almost all located in the upper Cliff House Sandstone Formation. They are in alcoves, on ledges, in crevices dating to the Cretaceous and Recent Eras. The alcoves were created through natural erosion of the rock caused by physical and chemical weathering. Some of these occupied alcoves and ledges are very difficult to enter so appear defensive. Others are located at the top of talus slopes with relatively easy access. Many but not all of the alcoves contain springs. The cliff dwellings vary in size from one room structures of less than one square meter to complex, multi-storied structures covering over a hundred square meters. The function of rooms varied from storage to ceremonial, food preparation to sleeping. There are approximately 600 cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park. Well over a quarter of this number contains just one room and over 80% contain from one to ten rooms. Only three sites have more than 100 rooms: Cliff Palace, Long House, Spruce Tree House. The orientation of these structures varies but the majority face either west or east with a few facing south and even some facing north.

The preference (possibly more accurately, compulsion) which led to the cliff-dwelling-type of settlement pattern is not understood. Hypotheses have changed as often as the political and intellectual climate in this country--defense, solar collection, preservation, establishing ownership to drinking water (springs), aesthetics, architectural fashion. Decisions that affect many people almost always have multiple causes and this is probably the case in thirteenth century Mesa Verde. Many dwellings, such as Mug House and Cliff Palace, are not difficult to enter. For those that are more of a challenge, such as Balcony House on Chapin Mesa, this restricted access does nothing but trap individuals into their homes; and of course, visibility from a cliff dwelling is necessarily restricted. A few cliff dwellings are perfectly located to capture sun in the winter and shade in the summer--Long House, Fire Temple, Oak Tree House. But most cliff dwellings face either east or west so are cold in the winter and only pleasant half of a hot summer day. Cold air drainage in the canyons makes some dwellings particularly cold in winter--Spruce Tree House is a good example.

The cliff dwellings are built of the local sandstone that was typically shaped and finished by chipping and pecking into blocks. The stone blocks are then set in an earthen mortar. There are a few jacal (wood covered with mud) walls and a few dry-laid (no mortar) sandstone walls. Sandstone boulders and big slabs are incorporated into some walls and there are even a few examples of hand-shaped adobe walls. Standing walls vary from one stone wide to compound and double wide. The typical room wall is built on a natural or constructed surface and above ground level. Kivas are typically built below the ground surface or fill has been added around these structures to maintain the appearance of being subsurface. Kiva roofs are incorporated into the floor of a courtyard with rooms and work areas surrounding the kiva/courtyard complex. The walls of kivas are stone-lined with either fill or undisturbed stone or soil behind these walls.

Rooms can have multiple stories, often with the upper room for habitation and the lower for storage. Floors can be natural (stone or dirt) or mud plaster over either stone or dirt. In multiple-storied roomblocks, the floor of the upper story is the roof of the lower room. In these cases the floor is wood with one or two primary beams, multiple secondaries perpendicular to the primaries and tertiaries of even smaller wood and juniper bark as closing material and then over this mortar, or paving stones and mortar. Roofs are either the natural roof of the alcove (room walls extending to the top of the alcove) or the wood and mortar construction of floors as mentioned above. The only structures with a different style roof are kivas. They commonly have cribbed wood roofs with the roofs supported by pilasters.

The layout of cliff dwellings varies tremendously but there are a few standard characteristics. Courtyards with their subsurface kiva are outlined on two, three or four sides with rooms. The bigger cliff dwellings contain several courtyards. Rooms were added and removed through time with little evidence of preplanning at the courtyard level. Some of the larger cliff dwellings have circular rooms (towers) or massive walls at either end of the alcove. Mug House has a tower at both the north and south end of the site. Late in the history of many of the larger cliff dwellings, a large wall or other restrictions were created dividing the site and preventing easy access between the two areas of the site. Multiple courtyards are associated with each half. Many archeologists assume that this divided architectural space is the result of a socially divided group--possibly with clans clustered into moieties as is found in Pueblo villages today. Both Mug House and Cliff Palace have such a wall, separating the northern portion of the site from the southern.

Common architectural features found in rooms are rectangular or T-shaped doorways. T-shaped doorways connect rooms to courtyards. Rectangular doorways are found in this same location and are also found connecting one room to another room. Almost all doorways are raised and sometimes dramatically so--making it very awkward to enter the room. Corner hatchways connect lower and upper rooms. Other common wall and floor features include niches, wall pegs, hearths, vents (small opening which extend through walls). Rooms can be plastered on either the interior or exterior wall surfaces. It is often difficult to decide whether a room was for storage or habitation. Such criteria as evenness of floor surface, amount of floor space, height of ceiling, evidence of a hearth, size of doorway, location of plaster, type of wall features are criteria used to determine the primary function of a room.

At the beginning of the 13th century, people continued to build unit-pueblos but built them as units of larger villages. This type of aggregation is found not just in the cliff dwellings on Mesa Verde but in all the surrounding areas. In the Montezuma Valley to the north of Mesa Verde, such sites are located at the head of canyons where there are dependable springs, such as the sites preserved in Hovenweep National Monument. Many small villages continued to be built but the overall trend is toward construction of larger villages. Why this occurred in the 13th century is still much debated. Defense and concerns about water and land ownership are the current hypotheses.

The other constant topic for debate in southwestern archeology is the movement of all Pueblo peoples away from the northern Southwest to locations to the south and southeast. From A.D. 1 to A.D. 1280 there was a great deal of movement into and out of river drainages and uplands by the Pueblo farmers who occupied the northern Colorado Plateau, but the general area was always occupied. Then in A.D. 1280 construction by Pueblo peoples in this area ceases. In the 14th century large inward oriented pueblos are built well south of the San Juan River. The kiva-tower-tunnel complex, the Mesa Verde keyhole-shaped kiva, the countyard unit all disappear from the architectural record. They are not found in any modern Pueblo village or in any ancestral Pueblo village dating after the 13th century. Suites and the dual division are found in modern Pueblos but small kivas associated with a cluster of living and storage rooms are not.