The Anasazi Culture of The Southwestern United States

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Anasazi of the southwestern Untied States begin as hunter-gathers around 6500 B.C.E in the four corner regions Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. These archaic Indians leaned to survive in a semi-arid environment with variable rain fall, and temperatures that range 32 degrees Fahrenheit to 102 degrees with 60 degree fluctuations in one day. The Anasazi culture not only survived in this hostile environment they flourished, and evolved many adaptations such as flood plain farming, advanced irrigation systems, storage of subsistence, diverse cropping systems, and when all else failed migration. Over time the Anasazi went from a highly mobile culture to a sedentary one because of their reliance on the production of maize. The Anasazi leaned to construct shallow pit-houses which evolved to large villages, cliff dwellings, large plaza-oriented pueblos, ceremonial structures, and roads that connected villages together. The Anasazi are known for their pottery which stared out plain but changed from black and white, to red, orange and yellow. Their society also changed over time form an egalitarian band of nomadic hunter-gathers, to highly interdependent stratified society. The Anasazi culture came to a climax around 1350 A.D, and the four corners region was abandoned never to be reoccupied again. The Anasazi seem to have vanished without a trace, however like any great mystery there are clues that may help us understand what happened to this highly advanced society. The scope of this paper will be to discuss the arguments of Jared Diamond author of the New York Times best seller Collapse, and Michael Wilcox author of Chapter 5 in Questioning Collapse titled An indigenous Response to Jared Diamonds Archaeology of the American southw... ... middle of paper ... ...ional Academy of Sciences of the Untied States of America. 99( 10) Larry V. Benson et al. ( 2006) Possible impacts of the early 11th-middle-12th, and late 13th- century droughts on western Native Americans and the Mississippian Cahokians. Quaternary Science Reviews. , 26(2007) 336-350. Badenhorst & Driver ( 2009) Faunal changes in farming communities from Basketmarker 11 to Pueblo 111 ( A.D 1-1300) in the San Juan Basin of the American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36 ( 2009) 1832-1841. Larry Benson et al. (2006) Anasazi ( Pre- Columbian Native –Americans) Migrations During the Middle -12th and late 13th Centuries –were they Drought Induced? U.S Geological Survey. Ventura R. Perez (2006) THE POLITIZATION OF THE DEAD: AN ANALYSIS OF CUTMARK MORHOLOGY AND CULTURALLU MODIFIED HUMAN REMAINS FROM LA PLATA AND PENASCO BLANCO (A.D 900-1300). Dissertation

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