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The Golden Age of the Anasazi began around AD 1100. It was to last for around 200 years in northern Arizona. During the period from AD 1100 to 1300, the Anasazi built numerous masonry shelters, villages, and cliff dwellings over an extensive range within the western portion of the Four Corners region. Architecture and engineering became advanced sciences, as numerous multi-story structures were erected in the larger population centers. However, too much success may have spoiled a good thing for the Anasazi.
The large villages and fecund fields, with a steady supply of food, and the cultural riches of the Anasazi may have attracted unwelcome attention from envious neighbors. The military arts may have become necessities during these years. Many of the major settlements built during this period were constructed in easily defensible overhangs, shallow “caves,” or on the edges of cliffs and mesa tops. It can be argued that the caves and overhangs provided natural shelter from the elements, and saved on scarce wood by not needing roofs, but the villages on the mesa edges were totally exposed, and gave no particularly good shelter. Indeed, a cliff- or mesa-edge community is highly exposed, and is better explained in terms of being situated to be constantly on the lookout for enemies and in providing security from outside attack. Cliff edges do not provide shelter from harsh weather.
The threat to the Anasazi may have come from the early ancestors of the hunter-gatherer, nomadic Ute and Paiute peoples, possibly in combination with the Apache/Navajo, whom some have suggested were already present in the area at this early date. Archaeology and anthropology will probably never resolve the questions of “first contacts” in these cases. With small-group, nomadic cultures, like the Ute, Paiute, and Apache, who kept more or less constantly on the move, largely used implements and dwellings of wood, and did not practice any significant agriculture, it is very difficult to trace very early migration patterns.
During this classic period, the fame of the Anasazi spread across the nearby Amerindian world, with the establishment of a growing network of international trade routes. Increasingly artistic baskets, pots and jewelry were produced at this time. Seashells, feathers, and parrots were brought to the Four Corners from the south and seacoasts during this period, for use in ceremonies and jewelry.
The Anasazi who lived around the Black Mesa basin region would eventually be labeled the “Kayenta Anasazi” by Archaeologists. This group developed especially colorful Polychrome pottery. Their settlements are notable since primitive and elaborate dwellings continued to be occupied, side-by-side, in their communities over a long period. This retention of old buildings demonstrated that there was a strong conservative trait in the group in the Black Mesa region at this early date. Anasazi groups at other locations tended to abandon older dwellings as more modern architecture was introduced. Even during Anasazi time, the Black Mesa-region natives were holding on to the past.
In most of northern Arizona, the Kayenta Anasazi culture encountered a period of crisis beginning sometime prior to AD 1300. Among the sites to be abandoned around AD 1300 were the three large settlements in Tsegi Canyon, in the Navajo National Monument, just north of the Black Mesa, and the numerous settlements in Canyon de Chelly, just east of the Black Mesa. Over a multi-state area, most of the western and northern Anasazi settlements were abandoned about this time, although eastern Anasazi culture persisted for many more years in regions of New Mexico to the east, as the Pueblo.
On a much-reduced scale, the Kayenta Anasazi/Hopi retained a toehold at small villages, like Oraibi, on the three southern prongs of the Black Mesa.
Warfare is frequently suggested as the cause for the crisis of this civilization. It is now known that drought undoubtedly also played a role in northern Arizona, creating pressure on both agricultural and game resources that might have driven the local nations to conflict. In addition, disease, arising from too many people in too-concentrated communities, may have created problems.
Poor sanitary conditions in large population centers with minimal running water may have fostered the spread of diseases and gastro-intestinal problems which weakened the various villages. Disease need not be epidemic to bring disaster. Endemic health problems can also weaken a community, over a period of time. Many gastro-intestinal bugs can spread rapidly through a concentrated population when sanitation is poor. During a drought, a community can fell pressed to save on water by cutting corners on sanitation. Many of the gastro-intestinal diseases leave no trace on the skeleton that would be detectable by anthropologists. Disease may have contributed heavily to the abandonment of the low-elevation Kayenta Anasazi villages at the end of the Golden Age. Whatever the cause, the Anasazi disappeared as a dominant cultural influence after AD 1300 in the Black Mesa basin region.
The Kayenta Anasazi and their neighbors seem to have abandoned their larger canyon and lowland settlements, and evacuated to smaller, cleaner, villages on the mesas in Arizona, or to settlements farther to the east, in New Mexico, during, or immediately following, the drought of the late 13th Century. After this date, a Dark Ages, labeled the Regressive Pueblo period by anthropologists, descended on the Peaceful People. This diaspora may have been recorded in Hopi legends as the migration to the four ends of the Earth.
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Contents, including illustrations, copyright T. K. Reeves, 1997.
on 5 April, 1997.
