Mesa Verde National Park; June 15; 2018

Mesa Verde is best known for a large number of well-preserved cliff dwellings, houses built in alcoves, or rock overhangs along the canyon walls. The structures contained within these alcoves were mostly blocks of hard sandstone, held together and plastered with adobe mortar. Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 21,240 ha near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Mesa Verde (Spanish for "green table") is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south. Mesa Verde, Spanish for green table, protects nearly 5,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. These sites are some of the most notable and best preserved in the United States. The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability, overuse of the limited resources and driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including Rio Chama, Pajarito Plateau, and Santa Fe. In addition to the fine basketry for which they were named, Mesa Verdeans people fashioned a variety of household items from plant and animal materials, including sandals, robes, pouches, mats, and blankets. They also made clay pipes and gaming pieces. Basketmaker men were relatively short and muscular, averaging less than 5.5 feet (1.7 m) tall. Their skeletal remains reveal signs of hard labor and extensive travel, including degenerative joint disease, healed fractures, and moderate anemia associated with iron deficiency. They buried their dead near or amongst their settlements, and often included luxury items as gifts, which might indicate differences in relative social status. The Mesa Verde region saw unusually cold and dry conditions during the beginning of the 13th century. Together with the overuse of limited resources (game, wood etc.) this might have driven emigration from Mesa Verde to more hospitable locations. The added population stressed the mesa's environment, further straining an agricultural society that was suffering from drought. The region's bimodal precipitation pattern, which brought rainfall during spring and summer and snowfall during autumn and winter, began to fail post-1250. After 1260, there was a rapid depopulation of Mesa Verde.

Cliff Palace This multi-storied ruin, the best-known cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde, is located in the largest alcove in the center of the Great Mesa. It was south- and southwest-facing, providing greater warmth from the sun in the winter. Dating back more than 700 years, the dwelling is constructed of sandstone, wooden beams, and mortar. Many of the rooms were brightly painted. Cliff Palace was home to approximately 125 people, but was likely an important part of a larger community of sixty nearby pueblos, which housed a combined six hundred or more people. With 23 kivas and 150 rooms, Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in Mesa Verde National Park.

The ranger told us that all the waste from the dwelling was dumped down into the canyon next to the Cliff Palace. In the waste layers you can follow the depletion of the resources. In the bottom there were bones from big game: deer and bear. In the upper layer mostly bones from small rodents.

Our ranger.

Our group

Cliff Palace

Cliff Palace

Cliff Palace

Cliff Palace A family dwelling. In the center the fire place with a separate vent for air to the fire. You entered the house from abave with a ladder.

Cliff Palace Our ranger explains all the interesting details.

Prickly Pear

Balcony House is set on a high ledge facing east. Its 45 rooms and 2 kivas would have been cold during the winter. The exit, a series of toe-holds in a cleft of the cliff, was believed to be the only entry and exit route for the cliff dwellers, which made the small village easy to defend and secure. One log was dated at 1278, so it was likely built not long before the Mesa Verde people migrated out of the area.

Yucca

Long House Located on the Wetherill Mesa, Long House is the second-largest Mesa Verdean village; approximately 150 people lived there. Long House was built c. 1200; it was occupied until 1280. The cliff dwelling features 150 rooms, a kiva, a tower, and a central plaza. Its rooms are not clustered like typical cliff dwellings. Stones were used without shaping for fit and stability. Two overhead ledges contain storage space for grain. A spring is accessible within several hundred feet, and seeps are located in the rear of the village.

Long House. Water gathering system. The mesas were build where to sandstone layers with different penetration of water generated a small but steady outflow of water, which could be collected in time of drought.

Long House

Long House

Wild horse. The horses were introduced by the Spaniards, and became on integrated and very important part of Indian culture. In the time where Mesa Verde was inhabited there were no horses, and the horses is an invasive species causing a lot of damage to the archaeological remains of the old culture.

A very nice new USA invention is smal breweries. Here we are having our dinner at the Wild Edge Brewing Collective.