[Chelsea]
Location: Mesa Verde National Park
Working Times: 9:30 am - 5:00 p.m.

Cliff Palace - Guided tour by forest ranger
Cliff palace contains 151 rooms and 21 kivas. It has been estimated 100-200 people once occupied this cliff dwelling. The forest ranger suggested that the site was a possible ceremonial venue or administrative center, citing the 21 kivas as being excessive for 151 rooms. However, archaeologist Ruth Van Dyke noted that five people to a kiva would not be unusual and the site could be simply residential.

Around 500 AD people were living as hunter-gatherers in the four corners area when they moved to the mesa top. Mesa Verde was ideal for the people's transition into farming with its long growing season. In the late 1100's half of the people living on the mesa top moved into the alcoves and began construction of cliff dwellings. A reason for this migration could have been that due to the drought occurring at the time a move to these alcoves would put the people closer to springs. Around 1300 the Ancestral Puebloans left their cliff dwellings. Why? Maybe the soil was not as good after farming the mesatop for a long time or perhaps it was due to the drought. Also, it could have just been considered time to move. A number of possibilities exist.

Upon walking up close to Cliff Palace it was observed that the masonry varied considerably between the structures. Whereas some units seem to utilize a pecked stone method, others have flat tabular slabs. (The masonry varies from really nice McElmo to poor Kayena). Also the walls generally seem to abut one another between rooms, indicating there was no central plan in the construction of the architecture and that it was not all constructed at once. The differences in masonry also seem to indicate that the rooms were constructed by different people as the each had different building preferences.

The terrace walls at the front of the ruin demonstrate a leveling of the floors in which to build residence and kivas as well as having a clearly demarcated floor path throughout the site. The clear mode of access to the dwelling seems to indicate the site was not built up with defense in mind. Also the window/doors in the rooms are large and low to the ground, indicating they were not trying to keep people out. This is markedly different from the towers at Hovenweep which are positioned on hard-to-access boulders. However there are some architectural similarities to Hovenweep as they both come from the Pueblo III time period. There is a combination of circular and square towers, and a utilization of natural features (large boulders are incorporated into the walls and floor of the architecture).

The kivas all seem to generally follow the same layout of containing a central firepit, an upright air deflector, a sipapu and ventilator, pilasters; however variations probably occur. In general, the walls of the rooms seem to be single courses of stone. Maybe the ancestral puebloans did not do multiple courses because they knew the cliffs limited how high they could construct their rooms (as indicated in the Mesa Verde National Park guide).

The t-shaped doors and rectangular doors are a point of curiosity. There does not appear to be a spatial consistency in terms of where the t-doors and rectangular doors are located on the rooms and towers. It is possible the two types of doors indicate a division between two types of space such as public versus private. (e.g. a public function being the storage of materials and a private function being a residential space). Also the t-shaped door may simply be functional in terms of carrying a lot of goods in one's arms or on one's back.

Balcony House - Guided tour by forest ranger
Balcony house is located beneath an overhang on the east side of Chapin Mesa, situated next to a seep spring. Two family clans- 40-60 people- resided at the Pueblo III site.

Balcony House is ideally situated to be easily defensible. The trail into the site existed as a narrow tunnel between a large sandstone boulder and cliff face. The Ancestral Puebloans closed off the tunnel with a masonry wall. A small crawl area only remained with a platform above this space so that intruders could easily be spotted. In addition, a steep toe-hold area was the only access along the cliff to the mesa top. While to site is well located for defense it is also in a good spot for water as a spring resides in the back of the cave.

While most of the kivas at Mesa Verde are oriented south, the two kivas at Balcony House were remodeled from a southerly direction to open east. This puts the kivas in a good line of sight to the La Platas. While there may be a social reason for the remodeling of the kivas it seems possible it may have been merely functional. A book by Ferguson and Rohn entitled "Anasazi Ruins of the Southwest in Color" notes that having the kiva oriented partially to the south was a not a labor saving endeavor. "[It] required the underground ventilator tunnels to go much farther than if the ventilators had been constructed directly facing the cave entrance on the east" (108).

The masonry of Balcony House seems to vary as some walls have flat tabular blocks reminiscent of McElmo masonry at Chaco and others have expedient looking walls with unmolded blocks interspersed with thick mortar.

An interesting feature is a wall that divides Balcony House into two halves. Perhaps this was some sort of social division such as status or two family groups as the forest ranger suggested.

Village Upon Village [Mesa Top Sites--kellam]

This village displays three phases of occupation, the first being AD 900, the second being AD 1000, and the third being AD 1075. The village consists of several types of architecture, including post and adobe, single-course masonry, and double-course masonry.

The kiva is in a Pueblo III style as it has a southern recess and the ventilator is positioned so that air comes from below instead of above-these features are reminiscent of Chacoan kivas. The kiva has a nice slab-lined hearth and there are eight pilasters on the kiva whereas the Pueblo I crescent-shaped village [kiva] only had four.

Sun Point Pueblo

Sun Point Pueblo is a village up around a kiva and a tower. The tower and kiva are connected to one another by a tunnel. A Pueblo III occupation seems to be indicated by the masonry walls of the kiva and six pilasters.

It is interesting that the block of a few dozen rooms are built up around the tower instead of construction the village to be more open like in typical Pueblo III fashions. Perhaps there was some religious or spiritual significance in the idea of looking inward to the tower and kiva.

Sun Temple
Unlike the cliff dwellings of Cliff Palace and Balcony House, Sun Temple was clearly built along a preconceived plan as there is consistent, nice pecked masonry and the presence of bonded walls verses abutted ones. This indicates the structure was built in the same time period (Pueblo III) and did not undergo subsequent remodeling. This temple has a D-shaped symmetry as it encloses twin kivas and courtyard space surrounding the kivas. The lack of [windows and firepits] seems to indicate this structure did not have a residential function and would therefore possibly make it some sort of ceremonial or administrative venue. As it is located in such a way as to have line of sight with Cliff Palace and other dwellings in the Cliff-Fewkes Canyons the structure seems ideally situated for a ceremonial function.

Spruce Tree House
This Pueblo III cliff dwelling is located near a large spring at the head of a canyon and has 114 rooms and 8 kivas. Two and three story rooms are present throughout this cliff dwelling with a variety of door types, including rectangular, square, and t-shaped. One of the buildings has roof beams extending from the second story which originally would have created a balcony that people could have walked on in order to access some rooms of this building. There are several pictographs at Spruce Tree House, one of which a guide pointed out to us along the back wall of the dwelling.

As Spruce Tree House is located near the head of Spruce Tree Canyon, which contains one of the largest springs at Mesa Verde it is not surprising to me that there are smaller cliff dwelling sites located in the canyon which may have formed part of a Spruce Tree House community. Spruce Tree House has pointed out to me one way in which ancestral puebloans formed a sense of community; they may have aggregated around water resources and areas which displayed agricultural potential. As part of our survey area is situated within a canyon it will be interesting to see if sites cluster around possible water resources. If this occurs we might be able to gain an understanding of what might have formed Lightning Tree community in our project area.

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