THE DEVELOPMENTAL PUEBLO DIORAMA
Dean Moorhead

This summer visitors to Mesa Verde National Park were able to cover a period of 12,000 years within twelve yards, and in those twelve yards they were able to view reproductions of the life and environment of all the ancient people of the Mesa Verde region. Many years of work on the part of the museum staff made it possible for a visitor to enter the museum, and find himself confronted by a group of ancient hunters stealthily stalking a herd of bison as did the Folsom men of 12,000 years ago. Beyond this the visitor saw additional groups of Indians: Basket Makers filling storage cysts with products of their semi-agricultural life; Modified Basket Makers living in their circular pithouses; Developmental Pueblo people inhabiting a spreading village on the mesa top, and finally the Cliff Dwellers themselves, industriously working around their gigantic apartment house dwelling and utilizing the products of preceding thousands of years of development. As the visitor watched the scenes fires flickered in the courtyards, billowy clouds seemed to float through the sky, fields of corn appeared to nod in the breeze, and the Indians themselves were busy with the various tasks which characterized their respective periods of development.

Of course the buildings are only miniatures, the Indians are only wax, and the backgrounds are but delicately blended paintings, yet so dynamically lifelike are the reproductions that these ancient scenes appear to be relived before our modern eyes, and a visitor leaves the exhibits with the feeling that he has been graphically introduced to life as it existed on the mesa hundreds and even thousands of years ago.

It was this row of dioramas that caused a recent visitor to write, "Looking back over the trip, one of the things that impressed me most was the diorama sequence in your museum. As I said before, I have worked on models and dioramas and know the possibilities and perils. I have visited most of the large museums all over the globe. But for downright good stuff loaded with human interest, I feel that you have the trump cards in your five small cases."

The final scene in this panorama of ancient life was revealed last spring when the Developmental Pueblo diorama was completed. For several years dioramas depicting the height of the Basket Maker culture and the peak of the Cliff Dweller culture have been displayed, but the period between these two cultures was not portrayed, for much remained to be known concerning the turbulent times when the Pueblo culture was evolving out of the earlier Basket Maker cultures. Once fully developed the Basket Maker and Pueblo cultures are easily described and little hesitation was felt in modeling these in miniature. In between the two, however, lines of development are shady, and definitions and descriptions are much less easily drawn; consequently the Developmental Pueblo diorama was left until last so that the very latest archeological research could be utilized in its construction. Fortunately the recent excavations of Morris,¹ Brew,² and Martin,³ have thrown much light on the Developmental Pueblo culture and have made possible the depiction of this period and the completion of the series of dioramas.

1. Earl H. Morris
Publication on Excavations in the La Plata drainage soon to be released.

2. J. O. Brew
"Preliminary Report, Peabody Museum Southeastern Utah Expedition, 1933."

3. Paul S. Martin
"Modified Basket Maker Sites, Ackmen-Lory Area, Southwestern Colorado, 1938." Anthropological Series, Field Museum of Natural History, Volume XXIII, Number 3, June 27, 1939.

The Developmental Pueblo Period was exactly what the name implies. It was the period during which the well-known features of the following Classic Pueblo Period went through their developmental stages. From simple beginnings the cultural traits improved and expanded during this period until they finally crystallized in the golden age of the Pueblos, the Classic Pueblo Period represented by the great cliff dwellings and pueblos of the Southwest.

At first glance the Developmental Pueblo diorama little reveals the momentous period which it portrays. In the foreground is a tiny crescent-shaped village of ten one-story mud and stone houses, while behind the village small fields dot the dense growth of the mesa top. Still farther in the distance other villages and fields are visible, and beyond these the Sleeping Ute Mountain forms a backdrop for the scene.

A closer examination of the diorama discloses much about life during this period, for in the fields and among the buildings a multitude of tiny Indians are busy about their daily tasks. New rooms are being added to one portion of the village, and the mode of construction of these and of the remainder of the village clearly reveals that this was a time of experimentation among the people. Mud, mud and sticks, mud and poles, mud and vertical stone slabs, and horizontal stone masonry—all these methods were used in construction of the houses, and it was only after prolonged trial and error during this period that horizontal stone masonry was shown to be the most efficient type of house construction. In the center of the courtyard a new underground ceremonial room, or kiva, is being built to supplement one nearby. The old kiva is completely covered and is revealed only by the smoke-blackened ladder protruding from the combination doorway and chimney in the roof of the structure. As the new kiva is just being covered, its square shape is visible, and its interior reveals that although it differs much from its pithouse progenitor, it still lacks many of the features which characterize a typical Mesa Verde kiva of later periods.

In the fields some of the men are just beginning to harvest the corn, beans, and squash which formed the backbone of their diet. Lest it appear that they lived entirely upon domestic plants, several of the people are shown picking pinon nuts and other plants products, two men are carrying in a deer, while at the edge of the village a boy has treed a squirrel and is taking careful aim with his bow and arrow as his dog barks loudly at the animal. Still other Indians are demonstrating that life is not all work, and are snoozing soundly in the shade of the trees surrounding the fields. In the head of a nearby canyon is a spring. Young women, with water jars skillfully balanced on their heads, are carrying water up the precipitous trail to the village.

The village itself presents a varied picture. Turkeys strut proudly around the courtyard. Dogs are everywhere, accompanying the men to the fields, sniffing suspiciously at holes, barking at the turkeys, frolicking with each other, and covetously eyeing the preparation of food. Pottery is much in evidence and both its texture and its design show marked improvement over that possessed by the Basket Makers. Baskets are also to be seen, but their importance has diminished since earlier days, their place being taken by the ever-present pottery. Visible for the first time is cotton cloth, the cotton for which undoubtedly was obtained from some region to the south.

In the courtyard and on the housetops women clad only in small aprons are busy drying food and grinding corn on their sandstone metates. Fires flicker throughout the village, and over them the women are cooking food in soot-blackened pots, awaiting the return of the men from the fields for the evening meal. Occasionally a hand slips, a pot is broken, and it, along with other refuse is tossed in front of the village to form the rubbish heaps which centuries later will serve as treasure troves for the archeologists.

Scenes similar to the one depicted in this village were being enacted in hundreds of Developmental Pueblo villages in the Mesa Verde and surrounding regions some 900 to 1200 years ago. The people were a happy, industrious, prosperous group as is evidenced by a rapid increase in population and the spread of the culture over a large area. Ruins of the Developmental Pueblo villages are not spectacular and people often overlook the importance of the period. It was of utmost importance, however, for without it there could have been no Classic Pueblo Period and no spectacular ruins such as Cliff palace, Pueblo Bonita, Keetsiel and countless others.

It is the hope of the museum staff that the Developmental Pueblo diorama and the other four dioramas will enable the increasing thousands of park visitors to visualize ancient life and people as they existed in those early days and thus be able to view the ruins with better understanding and greater appreciation than has heretofore been possible.

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