The geography of the Anasazi was that they were located in present day Southwest America in an area called the Four Corners region. The Four Corners region incorporates most of New Mexico, north Arizona, Southwest Colorado, and Utah. For the most part, their villages were located in canyons and on high plateaus. This location provided them with very dry and arid conditions; therefor their villages were always located near water.
This is a map showing different civilizations in this region, the Anasazi are in the most high up section.
This shows some of the dwellings of the Anasazi in the canyons, it shows the arid conditions.
This is another example of the arid canyon geography.
The Anasazi were very religious people. They believed in many gods, but they also believed in one main god called the Creator. Everything was a part of the Creator. Going along with that, they didn’t believe in the ideas of “good” and “evil” in their religion. “Good” was a result of positivity in the actions they made, and “evil” was an imbalance caused by bad actions. They had religious ceremonies and rituals based on natural processes like hunting, or planting. These rituals would take place in underground pits/rooms called kivas. Their polytheistic religion focused in on gods of nature, like a son god or rain god. Examples would be Kokopelli who is commonly scene in rock art and is the deity of fertility, or the rain deity Tlaloc.
This is a photograph of a religious pit called a kiva.
This is kokopelli, the deity of fertility.
This is tlaloc, the deity of rain.
The Anasazi were very artistic people, but their main focus in art was rock art. Many common themes discovered in their rock art were: large human figures, hand prints, zig-zags, and something called atlan spear throwers. All of their rock art was a way to express their religion. Later in their existence the appearance of birds became more prominent in rock art as the domestication of birds like turkeys became more common. Originally, the Anasazi people made beautifully woven baskets which had practical uses but were no doubt works of art with designs laid into them. Later on as more developments occurred; elaborate pottery became a very beautiful way of art and practicality. These works of art were made by the coiling and then smoothing out of clay, and they were marked with black on white design.
This is a hunting scene form of rock art.
This rock art displays the common theme of handprints that has been observed throughout Anasazi’s history.
This is another form of rock art displaying the religious symbol of kokopelli.
This is a display of the intricate designs of the Anasazi’s pottery.
Incredible detail is shown on the black on white design that the Anasazi are famous for.
The Anasazi have been around since before 1000 B.C., therefor they have had quite a lot of time for social development. However, our first real record of them is in 450 A.D. They originated as nomads who were gatherers with little hunting. The Anasazi had a phase of their history called the Basketmakers, and this supported their ways of gathering to survive. But they became more advanced as they came in contact with immigrants from the regions of Mexico. They’re society became more developed and they domesticated birds. This domestication of birds put an increase in hunting which is shown in their art as more spears and stories of hunting appear in their rock canvases. The Anasazi also learned how to farm lands which creates a heightened sense of advancement in their social development.
This is an example of the more stationary living spaces they occupied once the Anasazi substituted their nomadic gathering ways for stationary agriculture.
This is an example of the products made during the Basketmaking period of the Anasazi.
The Anasazi were extremely limited when it came to their politics. Archeologists and historians are still putting the pieces together so the amount of information is limited. But what they have learned is that the Anasazi were set up into clans, and each clan had leaders. These clans were matrilineal which means that clan affiliation is through the female line. As well as being matrilineal, the clans were set of politico-religiously which means that there were also a religious mechanism to their political organization.
This gives the observer an idea of the size of the squash that was used in their agriculture.
Corn was a major part of the food used in the Anasazi’s economy.
These beans are unique to the Anasazi, and were main sources of protein along with meat.
The Anasazi demography has a very interesting ebb and flow to its changes. Between 7000 and 1000 B.C. the valleys were barely occupied and historians are still looking into why that is. Different changes in the environment would affect the population size, for example droughts would kill crops and the population would decrease. Then there would be things like the discovery of maize and the population would increase. Factors like the fact that the Anasazi lived across four different states, their constant movement of location, the ebb and flow of the population, and their expansive time from the then till the present makes it difficult for historians to put an exact number on population.
The Anasazi had 8 different periods of which intellectual development could occur. There was Basketmaker 1: pre-1000 B.C., Basketmaker 2: 1000 B.C., Basketmaker 3: A.D. 450-750. Then came Pueblo 1: A.D. 750 to 900, Pueblo 2: A.D. 900-1150, Pueblo 3: A.D. 1150- 1300, Pueblo 4: A.D. 1300-1600, Pueblo 5: A.D. 1600- Present. Within this time they had much technological development which implies intellectual growth. For example the domestication of birds and their discovery of farming are both examples of intellectual development. However their religious ideals stayed the same throughout all these periods in history, as did their beliefs on how they should organize their clans. Their main development lies in the building off of technologies, however an interesting little fact is that they had courts to play ball games in. This shows an intellectual development in the genre of entertainment.
The Anasazi are a fascinating civilization to observe technology advancements. The Basketmakers originally lived in deep pits with slab roofs, and they used pinnon gum to line their baskets to carry water. Then in Basketmaker 2, they had pits with large over hangs. By A.D. 750 the original strategy of spear throwers which would launch darts, developed into the bow and arrow. This also contributed to the rise in the popularity of hunting. The Anasazi changed from basket-weavers to making pottery, and later the original black and white pottery developed into orange on red pottery. During Pueblo 1 a very advanced ventilator-deflector system was used for ventilating the pit rooms, this was new and very innovative for its time. Then, during Pueblo 2, the housing changed into stone houses, and later after that, houses were carved into the stone walls of canyons. Another development in technology was a smaller, more space efficient grinding system that turned corn into flour. More examples of technological developments are: snares and nets made from yucca fibers, fleshers and scrapers made from bone marrow to scrape fat off of animal hides, drop spindles and looms to weave textiles, and calendar markers to mark when seasons occurred.
Advanced tools were needed to build these inventive housing units.
These are authentic Anasazi bow and arrows.
Shards of the later developed orange on red pottery.
An example of the stone buildings during the Pueblo 2 time period.
Holes in a stone wall of where an Anasazi loom once was.
Additional Media:
Just in case you want to know more, here’s a video clip from history channel on the “mystery of the Anasazi”.
Works Cited Page
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Just so you know, the Rock Art hunting scene above is the Great Hunt Panel in Nine Mile Canyon. This was a Fremont area, not Anasazi.
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