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1,500-Year-Old Village, A Sign of ‘Revolution’ in the Southwest, Excavated in Colorado

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posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 07:30 PM
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CORTEZ, COLORADO — In a high-end housing development north of Cortez, Colorado — just 25 kilometers from the monumental cliffhouses of Mesa Verde National Park — archaeologists have uncovered a cluster of 1,500-year-old houses and a large ceremonial structure that together comprise the earliest known site of its kind in the region.


The settlement includes 10 pithouses built in various styles, situated around a great kiva that likely served as a kind of cultural anchor for a diverse community, the archaeologists say.



In the sixth century, she pointed out, the central Mesa Verde region — a broad arc of land that runs from the border of northwestern New Mexico to southeastern Utah — was typified by small groups that divided their time between foraging and farming, lived in semi-subterranean houses, and moved frequently.


But the evidence emerging from the high desert here reveals a different picture, Ryan said — that of a full-time, year-round settlement, where people tended crops of corn, beans, and squash and forged a community around a great kiva that was its ritual and political hub.


“This is the first population to move into the central Mesa Verde region and farm and be sedentary full time,” Ryan said.


“And so what we’re interested in is the origins of that population: Are they from the east or the west of the Mesa Verde region? The south?”


While pottery sherds and other artifacts will prove useful in answering these questions, researchers are already seeing clues in the village’s diversity of building styles, she said.[ex/]






“What’s fascinating about the Dillard site is that not one household there is exactly the same architecturally,” she said.


One newly excavated pithouse, for example, was found to contain two large intact food storage bins made of stone slabs




“We don’t have any other excavated structures at the Dillard site that indicate that there’s more than one of those,” Ryan said.


“We have some structures that are round and have no antechamber on them. We’ve got some that are shallow, some that are deep, some that are roofed uniquely.


“So this is providing clues to … not only the actual use of that structure — to see if the form is reflecting function — but also allowing us to look at the architectural patterns that may indicate who these folks are and where they came from.”


Another indicator of the village’s diversity may be its most noteworthy feature: the great kiva.


While the structure itself, 11.5 meters across, is strewn with pottery fragments and other wares that could yield insights into things like stylistic traditions, the real significance of the structure may simply be that it was built when and where it was — decades before any others like it in the region.


Ryan suggested that the kiva’s purpose was to serve as the ritual, political, and social nexus of a newly integrated community.

“Not only is the architecture [of the village] so diverse,” Ryan said, “but why else would you need an integrative public building unless you did have a lot of people from diverse backgrounds who were interested in integrating at the village formation level?”


The fate of the village, among many other questions, remains unclear. But evidence in the kiva indicates that it was ritually burned and abandoned within a hundred years of its construction, Ryan said.[ex/]





westerndigs.org...

This find represents the very beginnings of peublo culture. It looks like mesa Verde area is the home land of the pueblo peoples.
I highly reccomend going to Mesa Verde NP, it is a fantastic place.
The site at Cortez has some significance , it is just below the snow level in winter.

edit on 23-7-2014 by punkinworks10 because: (no reason given)



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 08:09 PM
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a reply to: punkinworks10
Interesting find, punkinworks10
Makes you wonder how they determined that the "burning & abandonment" were...ritual...?



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 08:11 PM
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a reply to: punkinworks10

How interesting! Individual and functional construction. Of course I caught the reference to 'below the snow line' and wonder if I had been alive then if I would have chased the warmer clime. My feeling would be yes, as I think that being a confirmed winter wuus is a trait ingrained and seared into my being going wayyyy back, providing of course that reincarnation is real.





posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 08:17 PM
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originally posted by: WanDash
a reply to: punkinworks10
Interesting find, punkinworks10
Makes you wonder how they determined that the "burning & abandonment" were...ritual...?


Yes, how did that come to that conclusion, especially in light of other new evidence show high level if intergroup violence in this area.



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 08:23 PM
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a reply to: aboutface
Cortez is just west of the divide and lies in a high altitude plain. Just a few miles east the Rockies rise up and places like Durango co, get a lot of snow. It does snow in Cortez but it's not as heavy as futher east. In fact cortez became somewhat of haven for professional cyclists, because you are near the mountains, for training, but out of the snow in winter.
There would also have been an ample supply of water from the runoff.



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 08:44 PM
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originally posted by: punkinworks10

originally posted by: WanDash
a reply to: punkinworks10
Interesting find, punkinworks10
Makes you wonder how they determined that the "burning & abandonment" were...ritual...?


Yes, how did that come to that conclusion, especially in light of other new evidence show high level if intergroup violence in this area.


"Ritual" has many meanings is anthropology. In this instance, it is merely a PC word for warfare. The Indians of the American southwest were constantly at war with one another raiding, scalping, and taking of slaves.



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 09:42 PM
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originally posted by: Aliensun

originally posted by: punkinworks10

originally posted by: WanDash
a reply to: punkinworks10
Interesting find, punkinworks10
Makes you wonder how they determined that the "burning & abandonment" were...ritual...?


Yes, how did that come to that conclusion, especially in light of other new evidence show high level if intergroup violence in this area.


"Ritual" has many meanings is anthropology. In this instance, it is merely a PC word for warfare. The Indians of the American southwest were constantly at war with one another raiding, scalping, and taking of slaves.

The level of violence in the four corners was astounding, and not just raiding and scalping and such but mass killings and torturing and canabalism.



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 09:52 PM
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I couldn't find a date on the article? The dig has been going on since 2011.



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 09:55 PM
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a reply to: Aliensun

I also think some of the suppositions that get made are premature since this culture was long gone before the current indian nations settled. It's something that bothers me every time, the rush to conclusions.



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 10:12 PM
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a reply to: Caver78
They were not "long gone"at all, how did you come to that conclusion.
When the ancient puebloans were pressured by severe climate change, drought, several things happened, there was warfare,some people went back to an Hg lifestyle while others left and migrated away , others stayed and changed little until the 19th century.



posted on Jul, 23 2014 @ 10:16 PM
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originally posted by: Caver78
I couldn't find a date on the article? The dig has been going on since 2011.

The article is from last week, 7/17/2014



posted on Jul, 24 2014 @ 04:51 AM
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a reply to: Aliensun

i was always led to believe that scalping was a white man invention .



posted on Jul, 24 2014 @ 08:06 AM
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a reply to: tom.farnhill
No,
It is a native American practice that is well documented I'm the record before contact.
One of the puebloans, would have the young boys chew on the scalps of defeated enemies, so they might gain some power.



posted on Jul, 24 2014 @ 09:24 AM
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originally posted by: tom.farnhill
a reply to: Aliensun

i was always led to believe that scalping was a white man invention .


Some but not all Native American tribes used scalping

Crow Creek Massacre




Many of the bodies are missing limbs; the attackers may have taken them as trophies, scavenger animals or birds may have carried them away, or some limbs may have been left unburied in the Crow Creek village. Authors Willey and Emerson state that "they had been killed, mutilated, and scavenged before being buried". "Tongue removal, decapitation, and dismemberment of the Crow Creek victims may have been based on standard aboriginal butchering practices developed on large game animals". These are among the mutilations discovered at the Crow Creek site. In addition, scalping was performed, bodies were burned, and there is evidence of limbs being removed by various means. As stated in the Willey’s dissertation, many of the mutilations suffered by the victims of the Crow Creek massacre could have been traumatic enough to result in death


Study of Native American scalping



posted on Jul, 24 2014 @ 01:40 PM
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a reply to: punkinworks10

Great article . . . Thank for posting.

I just got back from a hiking road trip of that area. Started at the Sinagua ruins south of Sedona, then on to the Painted Desert, Canyon de Chelly, Mystery Valley, Monument Valley, Mesa Verde . . . ending with a couple of days relaxing in Durango before returning home.

Quite right about the level of violence and migration between all of the sites (as well as subsequent return at later dates). To anyone who hasn't visited the many sites in the Four Corners region, I definitely recommend spending the money on a Navajo guide, which will allow you to backpack/horseback through the "back country" and see many of these sites up close. Otherwise, they are off limits to the average traveler (as they are on private land still owned by Navajo families). The "history" you get from the Navajo elders is also quite different than you will hear elsewhere.

I'm surprised that they consider 500 C.E. some of the earliest "in the region", unless they are just referring to Mesa Verde. Canyon de Chelly, Chaco Canyon, etc. have ruins (or earlier additions to those ruins) going back hundreds of years earlier.

It is simply amazing, the amount of archaeological sites in these areas. Inside Canyon de Chelly (and the connected Canyon de Muerto) alone there are over 5000 surveyed sites. I'm sure the one referenced in the article (at Mesa Verde) was one of the many "fenced off sites" that you cannot get too near, due to current work. In Mystery Valley, they don't even fence off the ruins like the other locales and you can walk right up to them . . . finding pottery shards every where you look. All they asked of us is that any pottery shards were picked up and placed on the rocks lining the ruins.

edit on 7/24/14 by solomons path because: (no reason given)



posted on Jul, 24 2014 @ 01:53 PM
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a reply to: solomons path
Nice trip you had there Solomons path.

I'm planning on an off road mc trip to explore some of the more remote sites.
While on a mountain bike ride near Moab ut, were were following an old Indian trail into the san Juan mountains? after a couple hrs of strenuous single track we ended up in a box canyon that cliff dwellings on canyon wall. I later learnedd that they were uncatalogued yet.
The site hadn't been disturbed for nearly 700 years , there were still seeds in pottery jars .



posted on Jul, 24 2014 @ 01:54 PM
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a reply to: punkinworks10
My bad the La Salle mountains.



posted on Jul, 24 2014 @ 02:08 PM
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originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: punkinworks10
My bad the La Salle mountains.



Yeah . . . San Juans are in the Durango area.

Mountain biking those areas would be awesome . . . I have an 11 yr old tag-a-long that isn't quite up for those type of trips yet, much easier to backpack or take horses in with him.

it's always nice to stumble on the uncatalogued sites. It is too bad though that after so many years and the amount of traffic that has gone through those areas, even those sites have probably been looted of most of their history. While in Canyon de Chelly, we spoke with an archaelogist who just discovered (and was flagging off) a site on the canyon floor. They just recently found it with GP radar buried under years (and many feet) of silt and sand. He said they might not even get to it for about a year, with the current monsoon season and the following winter ice.

Hope your planned trip comes to fruition and you have a blast!



posted on Jul, 24 2014 @ 05:37 PM
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a reply to: solomons path

Mountain biking those areas would be awesome . . . I have an 11 yr old tag-a-long that isn't quite up for those type of trips yet, much easier to backpack or take horses in with him.

Yes , that kind of stuff is a little rough for an 11 year old.
I m going to try and explore a couple of places in Nevada in a couple weeks. I found what may have been rock shelters in a remote canyon. So we are going to climb up and check them out.




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