Mesa Verde is an Anasazi site located in southwest
Colorado in the Four Corners area. The Mancos River borders on the eastern side
and it is just south of Mancos, Colorado. Mesa Verde National Park was
established in 1906 in order to protect some of the best preserved cliff
dwellings in the world.
The Anasazi are an ancient people whose relatives are the Pueblo Indians. Some of the more famous Anasazi sites are Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. They were situated in the southwest US in the Utah, Colorado. Arizona and New Mexico area. They inhabited Mesa Verde between 550-1300 AD. The Anasazi where mainly subsistence farmers. They grew crops on top of the nearby mesas. Corn was their main crop and also the staple of their diet. Men also went hunting to add to the food supply. These people created numerous cliff dwellings of sandstone for which they are the most famous. The Anasazi were also famous for their basket weaving. The women created very elegant baskets of all types. Anasazi pottery is just as well known as their baskets. They were very good potters usually making a black on white ware. These artifacts are highly prized even today.
People have always known about Mesa Verde and other dwellings in the area. Several of them were explored in 1874. The more important finds were made in 1888. There are numerous sites in the area. Numerous looting of the Indian sites prompted congress to protect the site as national park on June 24, 1906. This was done not only to preserve the area but to preserve the artifacts contained within the sites.
The importance of some of these artifacts is that they tell a story about the culture of the people. Along with Anasazi pottery that catches ones eye and is useful in drawing conclusions about everyday life, are the trash heaps that have been excavated. The amount of useful information that can be gathered from a trash heap that these people left behind is astounding. They tell us so much about the daily life of a people. Since these people have no written records, their trash is the key to their culture.
References
Rohn, Arthur. Mesa Verde National Park. Washington DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1971
Dozier, Edward. The Pueblo of the Southwest. Current Anthropology. Vol. 5, No. 2. Chicago 1964
Cattanach, Goerge. Long House. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1980
Yahoo! Parks: Mesa Verde- http://sports.yahoo.com/parks/locs/co/mesa.html
By Bryan Mitchell