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Twenty years ago archaeology was an exact science at Mesa Verde. A comparative study of the cliff dwellings and the modern pueblo villages left no uncertainty as to the ultimate destiny of the ancient inhabitants of the cliff houses. The story, in outline, was this: the builders of the cliff dwellings lived in the canyons of the Mesa Verde for several centuries, vanished at some uncertain date, and reappeared again far to the south; there, to prove by their own testimony that the archaeologists had correctly deduced the story of their migration. It must have been the Golden Age for rangers; the facts were few, quickly recited, and rarely contested. The Basket Maker had not yet reared his dolicocephalic head on the Mesa Verde. True enough, Baron Nordenskiold had found a circular structure in Step House Cave, the sides of which were constructed of vertical slabs. Within the structure he found "a small spherical earthen vessel of coarse material." In describing this site, he concluded that it was a burial place of the Cliff Dwellers1. Nordenskiold's observations were published, distributed, and serenely forgotten. Not until thirty years after his time did anyone realize how narrowly the Basket Makers had escaped discovery during the Victorian Age.
With the Basket Makers securely hidden, there were no serious archaeological problems twenty years ago. The Cliff Dwellers were Indians who lived such simple, well-ordered lives that the delineation of their culture was a matter of rote. This happy state of affairs was not to endure. The War Years witnessed a sudden acceleration of research in southwestern prehistory. The efforts of the student, formerly directed toward the evaluation of those specimens as products of social groups living in the southwest in prehistoric times. A new nomenclature was devised; and such terms as "pottery sequence" and "culture horizon" were brought forth to confound the rangers. J. Walter Fewkes was the first investigator to upset the well established story of early civilization in Mesa Verde. During the years from 1916 to 1921 he excavated five sites in the Far View group, four and one half miles north of Spruce Tree Camp2-3. The ruins excavated by him were; Far View House, Migalithic House, Far View Tower, Pipe Shrine House, and One-Clan House.
There, in an area no larger than a city park, Dr. Fewkes encountered five distinct types of pueblo dwellings. Four of these occur in the surface sites in the Far View area. The fifth-the Cliff House, is to be found in the head of Navaho canyon, within easy hailing distance of the others. As if the archaeological problems were not already sufficiently complex, Ralph Liton?, while in the field with Dr. Fewkes, excavated a site on the mesa near Square Tower House4. This site, Earth Lodge A, proved to be a dwelling identical with the circular structures first found in Step House Cave by Nordenskiold, and later excavated by Nusbaum; a typical home of the Late Basket Makers.
In the spring of 1934, the dwelling of the Late Basket Maker people was identified in the Far View group. One has only to walk a hundred yards south from Far View to see, in the red adobe soil, these vertical slabs protruding from the surface. Nearby, on the gentle drainage slope one may see fragments of pottery floated from the house sites during the passage of centuries. These pottery fragments are similar, in appearance and texture, to the "small sperical earthen vessel of coarse material" found in Step House Cave. The ruins in the Far View group present a rather complete historical picture of ancient occupation of the Mesa Verde. The several types of pueblos are manifestations of culture of the round-headed Indians; various groups of whom occupied the region in prehistoric times. Antedating them is the Basket Maker dwelling-built by a long-headed group which inhabited this region when the ancestors of the round-heads were, from the Asiatic viewpoint, looking upon the Behring Strait with a speculative eye. The Far View group of ruins is, in effect, a history book with pages of stones. The text is far from being completely understood. As yet, it serves rather to show the complexity of the story, without revealing clearly the events which took place. Never the less, a casual turning of the massive pages is instructive. A hurried examination of the ruins in the Far View group will show the considerable variation that occurs among the different structures.
In addition to these established types, two other ruins in this area are deserving of mention. Mummy Lake is a circular depression ninety feet in diameter, surrounded by a circular wall. Surface remains indicate a Great Kiva, so characteristic of the Chaco culture. Recent investigation has shown that within the wall there is no banquette, no firepit, no vaults or pillars; none of the features which would be present in a kiva. A quarter mile to the west of Far View House is another circular structure about forty-five feet in diameter. This mound rises more than ten feet above the surrounding terrain. In its unexcavated state, it appears to be a huge kiva, without any rooms adjoining. In the Far View area are to be found the remains of house-types which had wide occurrence over the San Juan River drainage in ancient times. The Late Basket Makers ranged over the whole area. The Chaco phase, as exemplified by Pipe Shrine House, was later to attain a remarkably high state of development in the region to the south, Far View Tower finds its counterpart in numerous tower-sites in the upper San Juan area. The cliff dwellings of the Mesa Verde have been identified with those in the Four Corners region and with the spectacular cliff houses in Canyon de Chelley National Monument. Only Far View House cannot be definitely classified. As a unit it is unlike any of the other ruins in the area. In its component parts it bears resemblance to all of them except the Basket Maker dwelling. In the light of present knowledge, Far View House is the problem child of the Mesa Verde. This small area is perhaps the most promising field for research that is to be found in the Mesa Verde. Not only can the various phases of culture be found, but there is every indication that their relative ages can be determined by stratigraphic evidence. The walls of Far View House, badly slumped and distorted, have spoken eloquently of the possibilities of finding a series of occupations on a single site. The builders of Far View House chose, as a house location, a prominent, well-drained knoll. Like the Vermont farmer, "they hadn't lived there ten years before they saw their mistake." While they occupied the dwelling the walls settled and leaned, as the examples of ancient repair in the ruin will testify. The reason for this extreme distortion of the walls is readily understood. Far View House was constructed on a huge refuse mound, a pile of debris accumulated over a long period of time. This trash pile was made by a group of people who antedated the Far View group, as the following incident will testify. During the present summer a child's skeleton was found in the refuse beneath the wall of an interior room overlying the skeleton completely, and underlying the wall was a layer of yellowish sand; representing a considerable period of non-occupancy during which this silt was deposited.
In some of the unexcavated ruins there is every prospect of finding such an accumulation of debris as will show the chronological sequence of occupation of the region by the various groups who are known to have lived on the Mesa Verde in prehistoric times. The question of the relative ages of the several phases of early pueblo culture in the Mesa Verde has existed for a decade, the answer was given a thousand years before the question was posed. In the ruins of the Far View area, and, more generally, in the whole Mesa Verde5, the answer is to be found. Not only does excavation of sites show promise of answering the question for the Mesa Verde region, but in an area like the Far View group, where several phases occur together, evidence might be found that would illuminate the entire field of archaeology of the San Juan drainage.
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vol5-2e.htm
14-Oct-2011
