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005 - The Aztec Pueblo Pt 1 · Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico

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  Speaker 1: Section four of Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico by
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  Speaker 1: John M. Corbett. The Aztec Pueblo Part one at the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of the Great Pueblo period in the Animus Valley,
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  Speaker 1: they may well have been a sizeable population living in
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  Speaker 1: scattered unit house dwellings and small villages built largely of
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  Speaker 1: river cobbles and adobe mud. The area to the south
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  Speaker 1: of Aztec in and around Chuco Canyon, and that to
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  Speaker 1: the northwest in an around Basic Verde, had each developed
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  Speaker 1: local variations in architectural style, religious concepts, and minor arts
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  Speaker 1: and crafts. Cultural influences from these two areas were to
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  Speaker 1: have a market effect upon the large pueblo at Aztec
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  Speaker 1: that was built, abandoned, and reoccupied during this period. The
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  Speaker 1: choc Awa washed to day, a dry stream bread during
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  Speaker 1: much of the year. Rises in the high plains north
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  Speaker 1: of the Chokromesa extends westward for sixty eight miles and
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  Speaker 1: then twists sharply to the north to join the San
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  Speaker 1: Juan just above Shiprock, New Mexico. For about twenty miles,
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  Speaker 1: it flows westward through a beautiful yellowish brown sandstone canyon,
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  Speaker 1: the cliffs of which step back in a series of
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  Speaker 1: gigantic sandstone ledges. In places, the canyon bottom is broadened level,
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  Speaker 1: but today it is scarred by a deeper royo with
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  Speaker 1: branches which extend up each little side canyon, so that
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  Speaker 1: travel on foot as or up and down the canyon
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  Speaker 1: is difficult. A thousand years ago, this arroyo did not exist,
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  Speaker 1: and the Chacaw Wash was a shallow, clear, flowing rear
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  Speaker 1: round stream meandering through a lush, green valley where today
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  Speaker 1: the sandstone ledges stand starkly denuded of all trees. There
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  Speaker 1: was once a dense forest of pines and junipers along
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  Speaker 1: this canyon bottom and on the Mesa tops to the
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  Speaker 1: north and south. The prehistoric TACANs erected some of the
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  Speaker 1: finest sandstone masonry peblos in North America. A number of
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  Speaker 1: other large chacos like sites were built in places outside
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  Speaker 1: the canyon proper, and the influence of this building style
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  Speaker 1: was felt for fifty miles around to the northwest. Of
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  Speaker 1: Aztec between the La Plata mountains and the Sleeping Ute.
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  Speaker 1: In and around the area dominated by the large table
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  Speaker 1: land of may Severdi, a second regional culture center developed.
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  Speaker 1: These Indians lived along the main water courses of the area,
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  Speaker 1: the mac Elmo and Montezumo or dry farm the surrounding mass.
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  Speaker 1: It was towards the end of this period that the
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  Speaker 1: Indians living in the mesa Verdi itself built their large,
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  Speaker 1: imposing cliff dwellings. By the end of the preceding developmental
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  Speaker 1: poor bloperiod, the communities in the San Juan area began
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  Speaker 1: to be more centralized and to be built according to
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  Speaker 1: preconceived plans. Such planning denotes a former community control or
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  Speaker 1: at least some kind of control over a fair sized
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  Speaker 1: labor force. Today, community projects are frequently carried out in
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  Speaker 1: the Peplows by the majority of the people under the
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  Speaker 1: direction of their caciques or leaders, after careful discussions and
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  Speaker 1: proper religious observances by the elders of the group. A
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  Speaker 1: similar form of self government must have existed in the
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  Speaker 1: prehistoric Poeblows. It was probably based on a time on
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  Speaker 1: a tradition given sanctioned by religious beliefs which extended back
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  Speaker 1: as far as the late Basketmaker period, where there were
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  Speaker 1: beginnings of large community cavus and centralized religious group activities.
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  Speaker 1: With large groups of people living together, greater cooperation was mandatory,
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  Speaker 1: and through such cooperation the necessary tasks were accomplished more quickly.
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  Speaker 1: Thus there was greater leisure for many people, which could
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  Speaker 1: be devoted to the more interesting arts and crafts. Sometimes
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  Speaker 1: societies limit this greater freedom and leisure to a ruling class,
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  Speaker 1: but such does not seem to have been the case
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  Speaker 1: among the poor Weblows. There are some indications, however, that
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  Speaker 1: especially in this period, there may have been developing the
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  Speaker 1: concept of a priestly hierarchy and also exercised civil control.
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  Speaker 1: The Great Pueblo period was a period of continued specialization,
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  Speaker 1: not only in architecture, but also in ceramics and in
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  Speaker 1: the minor arts and crafts. Nor did the San Juan.
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  Speaker 1: Most of the pottery seems to have been decorated with
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  Speaker 1: the carbon paint, that is, a paint made from vegetal dye.
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  Speaker 1: South of the San Juan, in the Chaco area, they
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  Speaker 1: generally seem to have used mineral paints. The pottery designs
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  Speaker 1: of this period were often hushured patterns with a thin
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  Speaker 1: filling lines surrounded by heavier boundary lines. Band designs of steps, frets,
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  Speaker 1: and triangles are also used. Bowls, pitchers, olaves, and ladles
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  Speaker 1: with the common shapes, and some cylindrical vessels and effigy
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  Speaker 1: pots are known. An equally popular were which it was
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  Speaker 1: not painted, was the cooking or corrugated ware mentioned earlier.
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  Speaker 1: In this period, the coils of the vessel wall were
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  Speaker 1: still sometimes pressed together to form decorative designs, or sometimes
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  Speaker 1: were smoothed over so that an almost plain vessel resulted.
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  Speaker 1: In the field of minor arts and ornaments, the people
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  Speaker 1: of this period reached a high degree of achievement. Olive
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  Speaker 1: vellus shell beads were still widely used, as well as
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  Speaker 1: stone beads in stone and shell pendants carved in the
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  Speaker 1: forms of birds and animals. Turquoise, which first seems to
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  Speaker 1: have been used in the lake basket maker times, was
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  Speaker 1: used extensively for some of the finest ornaments, not only
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  Speaker 1: for beads and pendants, but also in beautiful mosaics. However,
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  Speaker 1: it is the large multistroyed proweblows of the Jackal Canyon
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  Speaker 1: and the great cliff dwellings of the Mesa Verdi that
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  Speaker 1: attract the most attention. The native sandstone of Taco Canyon
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  Speaker 1: made an excellent building material. It was easily obtainable, It
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  Speaker 1: fractured along natural cleavage plains into thin slabs, and it
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  Speaker 1: could be ground and pecked into large rectangular blocks. Both
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  Speaker 1: the availability of sandstone and the relative ease with which
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  Speaker 1: it could be worked were important factors in developing the
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  Speaker 1: charcoal style of architecture. Some of these foreblos may have
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  Speaker 1: been as high as five stories, most were at least
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  Speaker 1: three or four stories. All show signs of constant alteration
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  Speaker 1: in individual rooms and in their general are yaud as,
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  Speaker 1: though some feverish urge was forcing the people to keep
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  Speaker 1: shifting the arrangement of their dwellings. Not all the rooms
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  Speaker 1: in any of the large peblos were occupied simultaneously. Usually
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  Speaker 1: the rooms towards the rear were used for storage or
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  Speaker 1: in many cases as dumps for refuse and garbage. Occasionally
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  Speaker 1: burials are found in them. All the great charcoal pueblos
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  Speaker 1: form self contained units. That is, they were built around
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  Speaker 1: central plazas or courtyards, as in the case of Poorblo Bonito,
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  Speaker 1: with a low row of single storied rooms closing off
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  Speaker 1: the formerly open side of the plaza. Or they were
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  Speaker 1: roughly rectangular, with closely knit, contiguous rooms and internal kivas
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  Speaker 1: as in Yellow House. This closure, plus the fact that
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  Speaker 1: the doors and windows which formerly had opened outward at
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  Speaker 1: the rear or sides are now sealed up, has led
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  Speaker 1: many people to believe the later parts of this period
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  Speaker 1: were marked by trouble and strife, and that this self
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  Speaker 1: containment was a defensive measure. At Chaco Canyon, many parts
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  Speaker 1: of the Poeblo walls were finally made. Dials of decoration
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  Speaker 1: were produced by using sandstone blocks of various sizes. An
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  Speaker 1: unusual effect was achieved by alternating bands of large rectangular
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  Speaker 1: blocks with a series of bands are much smaller, finely
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  Speaker 1: laminated sandstone blocks. The interior of the walls consisted of
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  Speaker 1: crude rubble in adobe mud, and where some form of
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  Speaker 1: banding technique was not used. In the outer or Venea wall,
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  Speaker 1: the chinks between the larger stones were filled with adobe
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  Speaker 1: mud and spalls of very small chink stones. When carefully done,
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  Speaker 1: this technique also produced an attractive appearance, since both the
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  Speaker 1: interiors and exteriors of walls were usually plastered with numerous
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  Speaker 1: thin layers of adobe. It is something of a mystery
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  Speaker 1: why the Indians took the trouble to produce such pleasing
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  Speaker 1: effects in their stone work and then to cover it
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  Speaker 1: up with plain plaster. May be that what we regard
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  Speaker 1: as decoratively charming was to them simply a structural and
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  Speaker 1: engineering feature. They may have considered carefully spalled and banded
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  Speaker 1: masonry to be structurally sounded than simple rock, rubble and
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  Speaker 1: plaster walls. Usually the walls of the upper stories are
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  Speaker 1: successively thinner, and a similar idea was used in the
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  Speaker 1: beams which formed the room ceilings and thus the floors
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  Speaker 1: of rooms above. The heaviest beams were in the lower rooms,
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  Speaker 1: and those in the upper stories were correspondingly lighter and smaller.
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  Speaker 1: In the charcoal type Great Pueblo up this period, the
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  Speaker 1: majority of the rooms were large by Pueblo standards. They
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  Speaker 1: were rectangular in shape, except for the kivas, which are
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  Speaker 1: circular and often eight to more than twelve feet long
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  Speaker 1: and six to eight feet wide. Ceilings were eight to
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  Speaker 1: ten feet highways, usually with the raised sill with three
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  Speaker 1: to four feet high and two to three feet wide.
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  Speaker 1: In comparison with the typical rooms in the Meseverdi area,
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  Speaker 1: those in Chaco were very spacious. In the Mesaverdi region,
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  Speaker 1: the people were also learning to build in sandstone, but
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  Speaker 1: the available sandstone was coarser than that in Choco and
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  Speaker 1: did not have the clean fracture plains, and the masonry
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  Speaker 1: was of a thicker and seemingly cruder sort. Walls were
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  Speaker 1: made of rectangular box of tan sandstone, which quite often
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  Speaker 1: were carefully shaped and ground to give a pleasing effect
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  Speaker 1: on the sloping green table top mountain known as the
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  Speaker 1: mesa Verdi, from which the surrounding area gets its name.
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  Speaker 1: In the early part of this period a d. Ten
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  Speaker 1: fifty to twelve hundred, the people built large unit type
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  Speaker 1: of weeblows upon the long finger like meser tops which
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  Speaker 1: extend southward from an abruptly rising escarpment on the north.
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  Speaker 1: Most of these units were multi storied, and although they
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  Speaker 1: centered around a central plaza, they were much smaller, more
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  Speaker 1: tightly contained units than their charcoal canyon counterparts of the
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  Speaker 1: same period. Frequently they contained at least one tower like
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  Speaker 1: structure connected by an underground passage to a nearby kiva.
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  Speaker 1: One or two of the kivas might be located in
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  Speaker 1: or front on the small central plaza. Although the rooms
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  Speaker 1: are smaller than the ones in the great communal houses
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  Speaker 1: of charcoal, they are solidly built of double corsi and
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  Speaker 1: stone blocks. Because in most cases the mazers are sloping southward,
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  Speaker 1: many of these unit houses were built upon one or
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  Speaker 1: more terraced flats. Frequently the only entrance into the pueblo
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  Speaker 1: was by steered entranceway leading from the south into the
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  Speaker 1: small interior court or plaza. At may Severity, in the
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  Speaker 1: latter part of this period, about a d. Twelve hundred
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  Speaker 1: to twelve twenty five, the people who had been living
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  Speaker 1: on the mesatops in the unitovs type of dwelling seemed
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  Speaker 1: suddenly to have abandoned these dwellings and taken up residence
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  Speaker 1: in the nearby caves. Here they built great pueblotype structures,
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  Speaker 1: often of several hundred rooms with numerous associated kivas. Since
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  Speaker 1: they were limited by the ceiling of the caves to
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  Speaker 1: two and three story structures and not so exposed to
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  Speaker 1: the elements, it was not necessary to use such thick
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  Speaker 1: strong walls, roofs and ceilings. The general construction at may
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  Speaker 1: Severity was therefore thinner than at Charcoal, and the rooms
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  Speaker 1: and doorways are considerably smaller. In fact, with the warm
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  Speaker 1: southern exposure of the caves which were used, the people
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  Speaker 1: must have done most of their living in dearly chores outside.
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  Speaker 1: In the small plaza areas and on the roofs are
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  Speaker 1: the lower tiers of rooms. The rooms themselves could be small,
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  Speaker 1: but they were probably used only for sleeping in storage.
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  Speaker 1: Because the native sandstone at may Severti is coarser grained
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  Speaker 1: and does not fracture as easily into blocks and smalls.
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  Speaker 1: This style of alternating large and small banded masonry found
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  Speaker 1: that chalcoal was not adopted there, but much of the
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  Speaker 1: stone work at may Severti is nonetheless excellent. Perhaps some
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  Speaker 1: builders had greater artistry than others, but some of the rooms,
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  Speaker 1: especially the circular towers, contained blocks which have been carefully picked,
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  Speaker 1: ground polished, and fitted into exact position with loving care.
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  Speaker 1: In this period, also a structure known as a great
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  Speaker 1: kiva comes into prominence. It usually has an entrance on
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  Speaker 1: the north side instead either through the smoke coal, often
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  Speaker 1: with the stairway, and has a large raised fire box
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  Speaker 1: in the center of the south side, and occasionally another
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  Speaker 1: entrance there. In addition, on the east and west sides
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  Speaker 1: of the floor are large rectangular stone lined pits built
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  Speaker 1: up above the floor. Their exact use is still a mystery,
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  Speaker 1: and perhaps they served more than one purpose. It has
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  Speaker 1: been suggested that when covered with boards, they would make
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  Speaker 1: excellent foot drums for the dances, or good places for
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  Speaker 1: the medicine men to conceal themselves while performing certain magical
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  Speaker 1: rites during initiation ceremonies. Finally, four large posts set into
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  Speaker 1: the floor of the kiva supported the roof. Great keivas
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  Speaker 1: are fairly common in the Charcoal area, but in the
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  Speaker 1: ma Severti vicinity they seem to be very rare. In
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  Speaker 1: each of the two areas mentioned above, Chacal Canyon and Mesaverdi.
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  Speaker 1: Archaeological work has revealed the continuous occupation of the sites
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  Speaker 1: in the immediate vicinity at the Great Aztec Ruin. However,
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  Speaker 1: there is still some doubt as to what really happened
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  Speaker 1: in two different time periods. They seem to be strong
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  Speaker 1: architectural relations to both the Charcoal and Maseeverdi centers, as
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  Speaker 1: well as close ties and ceramics and other items of
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  Speaker 1: material culture. Part of the intriguing mystery at Aztec is
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  Speaker 1: whether these similarities represent actual migrations from those centers on
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  Speaker 1: a fairly large scale, or an exchange of ideas or
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  Speaker 1: small groups of migrants who strongly influenced the local population.
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  Speaker 1: In the midst of the populous Animus Valley, along the
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  Speaker 1: edge of an old river terrace, early in the eleven hundreds,
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  Speaker 1: a large, multi storied stone peblo was built in an
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  Speaker 1: architectural style reminiscent of that in chocoal Care. Did a
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  Speaker 1: large migrant group from the charcoal area or some other
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  Speaker 1: area where charcoal like people were living, moved into the
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  Speaker 1: Animis Valley and erect this structure, or did some of
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  Speaker 1: the local citizenry decide to join in the community effort
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  Speaker 1: and copy the building techniques of their neighbors to the south.
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  Speaker 1: If so, what was the impetus which launched the local
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  Speaker 1: people upon this ambitious project. Perhaps a small group of
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  Speaker 1: highly skilled technicians, under the leadership of a few priests
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  Speaker 1: or medicine men, came from the charcoal area into the
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  Speaker 1: Animis Valley. Once established there by persuasion, teachings, or by
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  Speaker 1: religious magic and psychological control, they may have prevailed upon
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  Speaker 1: some of the local population to join them and to
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  Speaker 1: build their homes and kivas of sandstone blocks in the
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  Speaker 1: traditional chocos style. We may never know the exact answer
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  Speaker 1: to these questions, but wherever the people came from, whoever
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  Speaker 1: they may have been, whatever, the guiding Impetus Aztec Pueblo,
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  Speaker 1: like Rome, was not built in a day. Dates from
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  Speaker 1: tree rings as described later, indicate that the pueblo was
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  Speaker 1: built between a d. Eleven ten to eleven twenty four,
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  Speaker 1: with the major construction periods in eleven eleven and eleven fifteen.
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  Speaker 1: Probably a small group with just a clan moved into
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  Speaker 1: the site about eleven ten, and, finding it suitable for habitation,
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  Speaker 1: erected the first small part of the pueblo. The next year,
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  Speaker 1: much larger group, perhaps several clans of more joined the
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  Speaker 1: earliest settlers, and more than fifty percent of the pueblo
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  Speaker 1: was finished. Then, in eleven fourteen or eleven fifteen, a
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  Speaker 1: third wave of migrants arrived and essentially completed the pueblo,
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  Speaker 1: except for the one story row of rou which closed
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  Speaker 1: off the south side. It is possible that some of
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  Speaker 1: the indigenous animus population joined these newcomers and moved in
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  Speaker 1: with them From eleven fifteen until about eleven twenty four
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  Speaker 1: or eleven twenty five. Occasional rooms were added as new
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  Speaker 1: quarters were necessary for newly married couples, and his own
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  Speaker 1: rooms were used as refuse stumps and of Section four