Defensive architecture of the Pueblo culture in the Mesa Verde region , Colorado, USA
Abstract
For more than a hundred and twenty years, since the cliff dwellings were discovered in the canyons of Colo-rado, Utah, and Arizona there has been a debate on the topic of their function and the reasons they were left by the Ancestral Pueblo people. Th ese settlements fl ourished mostly in the 12th and 13th centuries A.D. and encompass sites located within canyons alcoves and shelters; the second “settlement model” included settle-ments on the edges/slopes of canyons, associated with stone towers and enclosing walls. In this paper, I focus on the research on Castle Rock Pueblo community, located in the central Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado. A result of this research that is conducted since 2011 by the Sand-Canyon Castle Rock Community Archaeological Project has been the precise reconstruction of the defensive settlement system. Th is research has also shown how such an organism of closely cooperating sites was able to eff ectively function in a worse-ning natural and social environment. Ethnohistorical sources from the Euro-American period and analogies to settlement systems in other parts of the world were also taken into consideration.
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References
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Bandelier Adolf,
1916 Delight Makers, Dodd, Mead and Company, Nueva York.
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[en:] The Mesa Verde World: Explorations in Ancestral Pueblo Archaeology,
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Cole Sally J.
2009 Legacy on Stone. Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners
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Cordell Linda
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Boston, Nueva York, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto.
Dean Jeffrey, Carla Van West
2002 Environment-Behavior Relationships in Southwestern Colorado, [en:]
Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in
Mesa Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 81-99,
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Ferguson T. J.
2002 Dowa Yalanne: The Architecture of Zuni Resistance and Social Change
during the Pueblo Revolt, [en:] Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt:
Identity, Meaning, and Renewal in the Pueblo World, red. R. W. Preucel,
pp. 33-44, The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Ferguson T. J., Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh
2006 History is in the Land: Multivocal Tribal Traditions in Arizona’s San
Pedro Valley, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Gleichman C. L., P. J. Gleichman
1992 The Lower Sand Canyon Survey, [en:] The Sand Canyon Archaeological
Project: A Progress Report, red. W. D. Lipe, pp. 25-31, Occasional
Papers, No. 2, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez.
Haas Jonathan, Winifred Creamer
1996 The Role of Warfare in the Pueblo III Period, [en:] The Prehistoric
Pueblo World A.D. 1150-1350, red. M. A. Adler, pp. 205-213, The
University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Haas Jonathan, Winifred Creamer
1997 Warfare Among the Pueblos: Myth, History and Ethnography, “Ethnohistory”,
№ 2 (44), pp. 235-262.
Johnson David C.
2003 Mesa Verde Region Towers: A View from Above, “Kiva”, № 4 (68), pp.
323-340.
Kenzle Susan C.
1997 Enclosing walls in the Northern San Juan: Sociophysical Boundaries
and Defensive Fortifi cations in the American Southwest, “Journal of
Field Archaeology”, № 2 (24), pp. 195-210.
Kohler Timothy A.
2000 The Final 400 Years of Prehispanic Agricultural Society in the Mesa
Verde Region, “Kiva”, № 1 (66), pp. 195-202.
Kohler Timothy A., George J. Gumerman, Richard G. Reynoldys
2005 Simulating Ancient Societies, “Scientifi c American”, № 1 (293), pp.
76-84.
Kohler Timothy A., Mark D. Varien, Aaron M. Wright, Kristin A. Kuckelman (red.)
2008 Mesa Verde Migrations: New Archaeological Research and Computer
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Kohler Timothy A., Mark D. Varien, Aaron M. Wright (red.)
2010 Leaving Mesa Verde. Peril and Change in the Thirteenth-Century
Southwest, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Kuckelman Kristin A.
2002 Thirteenth-Century Warfare in the Central Mesa Verde Region, [en:]
Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in
Mesa Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 233-253,
The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Kuckelman Kristin A. (red.)
The Archaeology of Castle Rock Pueblo: A Thirteenth-Century Village
in Southwestern Colorado, 2000, entrada 5 de abril 2014, sitio: http://
www.crowcanyon.org/ResearchReports/CastleRock/Text/crpw_contentsvoume.
asp
LeBlanc Steven A.
1999 Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest, University of Utah
Press, Salt Lake City 1999.
Lightfoot Ricky R., Kristin A. Kuckelman
2001 A Case of Warfare in the Mesa Verde Region, [en:] Deadly Landscapes:
Case Studies in Prehistoric Southwestern Warfare, red. G. E. Rice,
S. A. LeBlanc, pp. 51-64, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 2001.
Lipe William D.
1995 The Depopulation of the Northern San Juan: Conditions in the Turbulent
1200s.,”Journal of Anthropological Archaeology”, № 14, pp. 143-
169, 1995.
Lipe William D.
2002 Social Power in the Central Mesa Verde Region, A.D. 1150-1290, [en:]
Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in
Mesa Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 203-232,
The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 2002.
Lipe William D., Mark D. Varien
1999 Pueblo III (A.D. 1150-1300). Chapter 9, [en:] Colorado Prehistory:
A Context for the Southern Colorado River Basin, red. W. D. Lipe,
M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 290-352, Colorado Council of Professional
Archaeologists, Denver 1999.
Matson Richard G.
1991 The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture, The University of Arizona
Press Tucson 1991.
Ortman Scott G.
2008 Action, Place, and Space in the Castle Rock Community, [en:] The Social
Construction of Communities: Agency, Structure, and Identity in the
Prehispanic Southwest, red. M. D. Varien, J. M. Porter, pp. 125-154, Altamira
Press, Lanham, Boulder, Nueva York, Toronto, Plymouth 2008.
Palonka Radosław
2011 Defensive Architecture and the Depopulation of the Mesa Verde Region,
Utah-Colorado, USA in the XIII Century A.D, Jagiellonian University
Press, Kraków 2011.
Palonka Radosław
2013 Pueblo culture settlement structure in the central Mesa Verde Region,
Utah-Colorado in the Thirteenth Century AD., [en:] Environment and
subsistence – forty years after Janusz Kruk’s „Settlement studies…”
(= StudienzurArchäologie in Ostmitteleuropa/Studia nad Pradziejami
Europy Środkowej 11), red. S. Kadrow, P. Włodarczak, pp. 193-224,
Mitel & Verlag Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Rzeszów, Bonn.
Palonka Radosław
2014 Research on the Pueblo culture settlement system from the North American
Southwest: Results of Sand Canyon-Castle Rock Community Archaeological
Project, “Studia Humanistyczne AGH”, № 2 (13), pp.
62-83.
Palonka Radosław
2019 Towers as an Architectural Element of Pueblo Culture in the Mesa
Verde Region, Utah-Colorado, in the 12th-13th Century A.D. Papers
from 3rd Conference on Towers in Medieval Europe “URBS TURRITA
– Towers in Medieval Cities and Towns”.
Palonka Radosław, Anna Słupianek, Jakub Nawrot
2015 Pueblo Community in the Lower Sand Canyon Locality, Colorado:
Preliminary report of The Sand Canyon-Castle Rock Community
Archaeological Project, 2011-2014, “Contributions in New World
Archaeology”, red. J.K. Kozłowski, R. Palonka, M. Wasilewski,
J. Źrałka, № 9, pp. 69-92.
Plog, Stephen
1997 Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest, Thames & Hudson, Londres.
Schaafsma Polly
1980 Indian Rock Art of the Southwest. University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque.
Schaafsma Polly
2003 Warrior, Shield, and Star: Imagery and Ideology of Pueblo Warfare.
Western Edge Press.
Schulman A.
1950 Pre-Columbian Towers in the Southwest, “American Antiquity” № 4
(15), pp. 288-297.
Spielmann K. A.
1994 Clustered Confederacies: Sociopolitical Organization in the Protohistoric
Rio Grande, [en:] Ancient Southwest Community: Models
and Methods for the Study of Prehistoric Social Organization, red.
H. Wills and R. Leonard, pp. 45-54. University of New Mexico Press
Albuquerque.
Thompson Ian M.
2002 Native American Perspectives on Sand Canyon Pueblo and Other Ancestral
Sites, [en:] Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient
Communities in Mesa Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen,
pp. 257-262, The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Thompson Ian M.
2004 The Towers of Hovenweep, Canyonlands Natural History Association,
Moab.
Towner Ronald H.
1999 Eighteenth-Century Navajo Defensive Sites in the Dinetah, “Archaeology
Southwest”, № 2 (13), pp. 8-9.
Towner Ronald H.
2004 Defending the Dinétah. Pueblitos in the Ancestral Navajo Heartland.
The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Van Dyke Ruth M., R. Kyle Bocinsky, Thomas C. Windes, Tucker J. Robinson2016 Great houses, shrines, and high places: Intervisibility in the Chacoan
world, “American Antiquity”, № 2 (81), pp. 205–230.
Van West Carla R., Jeffrey S. Dean
2000 Environmental Characteristics of the A.D. 900-1300 Period in the
Central Mesa Verde Region, “Kiva”, № 1 (66), pp. 19-44.
Varien Mark D.
1999 Sedentism and Mobility in a Social Landscape. Mesa Verde & Beyond.
The University of Arizon Press, Tucson.
Varien Mark D.
2000 Introduction, “Kiva”, № 1 (66), pp. 5-18.
Varien Mark D., Scott G. Ortman, Timothy A. Kohler, Donna M. Glowacki, C. David
Johnson,
2007 Historical Ecology in the Mesa Verde Region: Results from the Village
Ecodynamics Project, “American Antiquity”, № 2 (72), pp. 273-299.
Wilshusen Richard H.
1999 Basketmaker III (A.D. 500-750). Chapter 6, [en:] Colorado Prehistory:
a Context for the Southern Colorado River Basin, red. W. D. Lipe,
M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 166-195, Colorado Council of Professional
Archaeologists, Denver.
Wilshusen Richard H.
2002 Estimating Population in the Central Mesa Verde Region, [en:] Seeking
the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in Mesa
Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 101-120, The
University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
1992 Archaeological Survey of Lower East Rock and Sand Canyons, Montezuma
County, Colorado, Unpublished report, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez.
Bandelier Adolf,
1916 Delight Makers, Dodd, Mead and Company, Nueva York.
Bryan Susan Montoya
2009 Study looks at early Navajo use of smoke signals, Entrada: 8 de junio, 2009, sitio: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/45844982.
html, Associated Press Write.
Cameron Catherine M.
1995 Tracing Migration Pathways from the Receiving End, “Journal of Anthropological
Archaeology”, № 14, pp. 203-211.
Cameron Catherine M.
2006 Leaving Mesa Verde, [en:] The Mesa Verde World: Explorations in
Ancestral Pueblo Archaeology, red. D. G. Noble, pp. 139-147, School
of American Research Press, Santa Fe.
Charles Mona
2006 The Earliest Mesa Verdeans: Hunters, Foragers, and First Farmers,
[en:] The Mesa Verde World: Explorations in Ancestral Pueblo Archaeology,
red. D. G. Noble, pp. 9-17, School of American Research
Press, Santa Fe.
Cole Sally J.
2009 Legacy on Stone. Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners
Region, Johnson Books, Boulder.
Cordell Linda
1997 Archaeology of the Southwest, Academic Press, San Diego, Londres,
Boston, Nueva York, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto.
Dean Jeffrey, Carla Van West
2002 Environment-Behavior Relationships in Southwestern Colorado, [en:]
Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in
Mesa Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 81-99,
The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Ferguson T. J.
2002 Dowa Yalanne: The Architecture of Zuni Resistance and Social Change
during the Pueblo Revolt, [en:] Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt:
Identity, Meaning, and Renewal in the Pueblo World, red. R. W. Preucel,
pp. 33-44, The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Ferguson T. J., Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh
2006 History is in the Land: Multivocal Tribal Traditions in Arizona’s San
Pedro Valley, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Gleichman C. L., P. J. Gleichman
1992 The Lower Sand Canyon Survey, [en:] The Sand Canyon Archaeological
Project: A Progress Report, red. W. D. Lipe, pp. 25-31, Occasional
Papers, No. 2, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez.
Haas Jonathan, Winifred Creamer
1996 The Role of Warfare in the Pueblo III Period, [en:] The Prehistoric
Pueblo World A.D. 1150-1350, red. M. A. Adler, pp. 205-213, The
University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Haas Jonathan, Winifred Creamer
1997 Warfare Among the Pueblos: Myth, History and Ethnography, “Ethnohistory”,
№ 2 (44), pp. 235-262.
Johnson David C.
2003 Mesa Verde Region Towers: A View from Above, “Kiva”, № 4 (68), pp.
323-340.
Kenzle Susan C.
1997 Enclosing walls in the Northern San Juan: Sociophysical Boundaries
and Defensive Fortifi cations in the American Southwest, “Journal of
Field Archaeology”, № 2 (24), pp. 195-210.
Kohler Timothy A.
2000 The Final 400 Years of Prehispanic Agricultural Society in the Mesa
Verde Region, “Kiva”, № 1 (66), pp. 195-202.
Kohler Timothy A., George J. Gumerman, Richard G. Reynoldys
2005 Simulating Ancient Societies, “Scientifi c American”, № 1 (293), pp.
76-84.
Kohler Timothy A., Mark D. Varien, Aaron M. Wright, Kristin A. Kuckelman (red.)
2008 Mesa Verde Migrations: New Archaeological Research and Computer
Simulation Suggest why Ancestral Puebloans Deserted the Northern
Southwest United States, “American Scientist”, № 96, pp. 146-153.
Kohler Timothy A., Mark D. Varien, Aaron M. Wright (red.)
2010 Leaving Mesa Verde. Peril and Change in the Thirteenth-Century
Southwest, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Kuckelman Kristin A.
2002 Thirteenth-Century Warfare in the Central Mesa Verde Region, [en:]
Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in
Mesa Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 233-253,
The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Kuckelman Kristin A. (red.)
The Archaeology of Castle Rock Pueblo: A Thirteenth-Century Village
in Southwestern Colorado, 2000, entrada 5 de abril 2014, sitio: http://
www.crowcanyon.org/ResearchReports/CastleRock/Text/crpw_contentsvoume.
asp
LeBlanc Steven A.
1999 Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest, University of Utah
Press, Salt Lake City 1999.
Lightfoot Ricky R., Kristin A. Kuckelman
2001 A Case of Warfare in the Mesa Verde Region, [en:] Deadly Landscapes:
Case Studies in Prehistoric Southwestern Warfare, red. G. E. Rice,
S. A. LeBlanc, pp. 51-64, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 2001.
Lipe William D.
1995 The Depopulation of the Northern San Juan: Conditions in the Turbulent
1200s.,”Journal of Anthropological Archaeology”, № 14, pp. 143-
169, 1995.
Lipe William D.
2002 Social Power in the Central Mesa Verde Region, A.D. 1150-1290, [en:]
Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in
Mesa Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 203-232,
The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 2002.
Lipe William D., Mark D. Varien
1999 Pueblo III (A.D. 1150-1300). Chapter 9, [en:] Colorado Prehistory:
A Context for the Southern Colorado River Basin, red. W. D. Lipe,
M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 290-352, Colorado Council of Professional
Archaeologists, Denver 1999.
Matson Richard G.
1991 The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture, The University of Arizona
Press Tucson 1991.
Ortman Scott G.
2008 Action, Place, and Space in the Castle Rock Community, [en:] The Social
Construction of Communities: Agency, Structure, and Identity in the
Prehispanic Southwest, red. M. D. Varien, J. M. Porter, pp. 125-154, Altamira
Press, Lanham, Boulder, Nueva York, Toronto, Plymouth 2008.
Palonka Radosław
2011 Defensive Architecture and the Depopulation of the Mesa Verde Region,
Utah-Colorado, USA in the XIII Century A.D, Jagiellonian University
Press, Kraków 2011.
Palonka Radosław
2013 Pueblo culture settlement structure in the central Mesa Verde Region,
Utah-Colorado in the Thirteenth Century AD., [en:] Environment and
subsistence – forty years after Janusz Kruk’s „Settlement studies…”
(= StudienzurArchäologie in Ostmitteleuropa/Studia nad Pradziejami
Europy Środkowej 11), red. S. Kadrow, P. Włodarczak, pp. 193-224,
Mitel & Verlag Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Rzeszów, Bonn.
Palonka Radosław
2014 Research on the Pueblo culture settlement system from the North American
Southwest: Results of Sand Canyon-Castle Rock Community Archaeological
Project, “Studia Humanistyczne AGH”, № 2 (13), pp.
62-83.
Palonka Radosław
2019 Towers as an Architectural Element of Pueblo Culture in the Mesa
Verde Region, Utah-Colorado, in the 12th-13th Century A.D. Papers
from 3rd Conference on Towers in Medieval Europe “URBS TURRITA
– Towers in Medieval Cities and Towns”.
Palonka Radosław, Anna Słupianek, Jakub Nawrot
2015 Pueblo Community in the Lower Sand Canyon Locality, Colorado:
Preliminary report of The Sand Canyon-Castle Rock Community
Archaeological Project, 2011-2014, “Contributions in New World
Archaeology”, red. J.K. Kozłowski, R. Palonka, M. Wasilewski,
J. Źrałka, № 9, pp. 69-92.
Plog, Stephen
1997 Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest, Thames & Hudson, Londres.
Schaafsma Polly
1980 Indian Rock Art of the Southwest. University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque.
Schaafsma Polly
2003 Warrior, Shield, and Star: Imagery and Ideology of Pueblo Warfare.
Western Edge Press.
Schulman A.
1950 Pre-Columbian Towers in the Southwest, “American Antiquity” № 4
(15), pp. 288-297.
Spielmann K. A.
1994 Clustered Confederacies: Sociopolitical Organization in the Protohistoric
Rio Grande, [en:] Ancient Southwest Community: Models
and Methods for the Study of Prehistoric Social Organization, red.
H. Wills and R. Leonard, pp. 45-54. University of New Mexico Press
Albuquerque.
Thompson Ian M.
2002 Native American Perspectives on Sand Canyon Pueblo and Other Ancestral
Sites, [en:] Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient
Communities in Mesa Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen,
pp. 257-262, The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Thompson Ian M.
2004 The Towers of Hovenweep, Canyonlands Natural History Association,
Moab.
Towner Ronald H.
1999 Eighteenth-Century Navajo Defensive Sites in the Dinetah, “Archaeology
Southwest”, № 2 (13), pp. 8-9.
Towner Ronald H.
2004 Defending the Dinétah. Pueblitos in the Ancestral Navajo Heartland.
The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Van Dyke Ruth M., R. Kyle Bocinsky, Thomas C. Windes, Tucker J. Robinson2016 Great houses, shrines, and high places: Intervisibility in the Chacoan
world, “American Antiquity”, № 2 (81), pp. 205–230.
Van West Carla R., Jeffrey S. Dean
2000 Environmental Characteristics of the A.D. 900-1300 Period in the
Central Mesa Verde Region, “Kiva”, № 1 (66), pp. 19-44.
Varien Mark D.
1999 Sedentism and Mobility in a Social Landscape. Mesa Verde & Beyond.
The University of Arizon Press, Tucson.
Varien Mark D.
2000 Introduction, “Kiva”, № 1 (66), pp. 5-18.
Varien Mark D., Scott G. Ortman, Timothy A. Kohler, Donna M. Glowacki, C. David
Johnson,
2007 Historical Ecology in the Mesa Verde Region: Results from the Village
Ecodynamics Project, “American Antiquity”, № 2 (72), pp. 273-299.
Wilshusen Richard H.
1999 Basketmaker III (A.D. 500-750). Chapter 6, [en:] Colorado Prehistory:
a Context for the Southern Colorado River Basin, red. W. D. Lipe,
M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 166-195, Colorado Council of Professional
Archaeologists, Denver.
Wilshusen Richard H.
2002 Estimating Population in the Central Mesa Verde Region, [en:] Seeking
the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in Mesa
Verde Region, red. M. D. Varien, R. H. Wilshusen, pp. 101-120, The
University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Published
2020-12-31
How to Cite
Palonka, R. (2020). Defensive architecture of the Pueblo culture in the Mesa Verde region , Colorado, USA. Estudios Latinoamericanos, 39, 185-213. https://doi.org/10.36447/Estudios2019.v39.art11
Section
Estudios dedicados a Andrzej Krzanowski
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