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A Grand and Isolatedone Place Robert P. Powers Some 125 years ago an intrepid Southwestern cal sites on the Pajarito Plateau—the volcanic tuff ethnologist and historian named Adolph Bandelier tableland dissected by Frijoles and other canyons— scribbled an entry in his journal, describing with relatively little archaeology has been done there. amazement a canyon filled with Pueblo ruins and Because of this, the story of Bandelier National cave dwellings in a remote part of northern New Monument and the surrounding plateau has Mexico: remained, as writers love to say, “shrouded in mys- The grandest thing I ever saw. A magnificent tery.” Fortunately, an abundance of new, innovative growth of pines, encina, alamos and towering research, much of it conducted by the authors of cliffs, of pumice or volcanic tuff, exceedingly this book, has begun to unveil a complex human friable. The cliffs are vertical on the north side, story that is as singular and thought-provoking as and their bases are, for a length as yet unknown that of better-known Chaco Canyon and Mesa to me, used as dwellings both from the inside Verde. It is made all the more compelling by the and, by inserting the roof poles, for stories out- lateness of its telling. It is both a new story and an side. It is of the highest interest. There are some ancient tale, and it is as grand as any Bandelier of one, two, and three stories.… Aside from the could have imagined. caves, there are ruins of a large pueblo, immense Idyllic but Unpredictable estufas, round towers of two stories, etc. Part of the seductive power of the Pajarito Plateau Bandelier’s journal entry became the first written lies in its spectacular volcanic landscape. Wedged record of the rugged beauty of isolated Frijoles between the rim of the Jemez Mountains and the Canyon and its impressive but enigmatic archaeo- Rio Grande, the plateau is a nine-hundred-foot layer logical sites. In the century since his first visit, of solidified volcanic ash, or tuff, deposited more much has changed. A trip to Frijoles no longer than a million years ago by the explosion of the requires a two-day mule ride, and the canyon is Valles Caldera. Within its roughly 220-square-mile now part of Bandelier National Monument. Each expanse, the plateau ranges from 5,500 to over 8,000 year more than three hundred thousand visitors feet in elevation. A dozen deep canyons cut it into descend into the canyon to inspect the ruins and, long, sloping mesas (see plate 1). A few canyons on hot summer days, dabble their feet in Frijoles with permanent streams, such as Frijoles, are oases Creek. What has not changed is the way visitors that nourish water-loving plants and animals that react. Their first glimpse of the canyon still provokes otherwise could not survive. the same mixture of surprise, awe, and curiosity The sheer tuff cliffs of the canyons hold the that Bandelier expressed in his diary. remains of hundreds of cliff-face apartments that Despite the extraordinary wealth of archaeologi- Puebloan people excavated into the soft rock. In Copyrighted Material Figure 1.2. Cavate rooms in the north wall of Frijoles Canyon, seen from Tyuonyi Pueblo. 2 Robert P.Powers / Copyrighted Material Frijoles Canyon these dwellings, known as “cavate nities in the late 1200s, these elaborate ceremonial rooms” or just “cavates,” accompanied the nearby and residential centers collapsed in a tangled web village of Tyuonyi to form a prehistoric community of drought, internal dissension, and violence. that spread along the canyon for over a mile. Settling on the Pajarito gave the refugees a Frijoles Canyon is so impressive that many visitors chance to start anew and learn from old mistakes. come away convinced that the canyons must have We might suppose that many of the immigrants been the focus of human life on the plateau. In fact, vowed never again to live in large villages or heed during their first three centuries there the Puebloans the instructions of elite religious leaders. During the lived not in the canyons but on the mesa tops, 1100s and early 1200s, little happened to challenge abandoning them only when they were no longer these resolutions, but as thousands more immigrants capable of sustaining agriculture. poured onto the plateau in the late 1200s, it became Because the Pajaritans lived both on the mesas increasingly clear that organized communities and and in the canyons, it is hard to walk anywhere on wise political and religious leaders were needed to the Pajarito Plateau without spotting broken pieces apportion and protect agricultural land and wild of pottery or stone flakes—or, more prosaically, foods, establish food reserves, and promote cooper- rusting cans and shards of glass—all enduring frag- ation and concord among people with different ments of the plateau’s nearly twelve-thousand-year backgrounds and languages. How the Puebloans human history. The Pajarito holds an estimated ten reinvented village life to meet the special demands thousand archaeological sites, from nearly invisible of the Pajarito landscape—and the consequences of scatters of artifacts to immense Puebloan villages. their actions—forms the plateau’s most compelling These remains offer gritty evidence of the inventive story. ways in which humans used this landscape and how it shaped their lives. Indeed, what is most Telling the Pajarito Story fascinating about the Pajarito is how successfully its In the chapters that follow, my colleagues use find- people have faced the difficulties and uncertainties ings from recent archaeological research to address of making a living in a drought-prone and always this and related themes. Better archaeological evi- unpredictable environment. These challenges were dence collected during the last thirty years makes it most ingeniously met by Puebloan farmers who possible to ask and answer increasingly sophisticated made the plateau their home during the late prehis- questions. The new evidence grew out of three toric period. important investigations. First, members of the eight-year-long Pajarito Archaeological Research Reinventing Pueblo Life in a New Landscape Project, directed by James N. Hill of the University The Puebloan farmers who colonized the Pajarito of California, Los Angeles, surveyed for sites across Plateau in the late 1100s and 1200s were desert- the Pajarito and excavated some of them. A second smart survivors who had been victims of their own study, the Bandelier Archaeological Survey, was success. Immigrants from Chaco Canyon, Mesa prompted by a lack of comprehensive, accurate Verde, and the San Juan River area, they carried with information about sites in Bandelier National them the distilled wisdom earned during seven cen- Monument. Under my direction, project staff turies of farming-based village life in the northern recorded valuable data on nearly two thousand Southwest. They were masters at coaxing crops prehistoric and historic sites. Third, Timothy A. from poor, parched soils and at supplementing their Kohler’s Bandelier Archaeological Excavation Project harvests with hunted game and edible wild plants. greatly expanded the reach of the survey by exca- They were also wary, chastened refugees of the vast vating at six sites together spanning more than four network of great-house communities that covered hundred years of ancestral Pueblo life. Stimulated much of the eastern Colorado Plateau between 1000 in part by these studies, researchers continue to and 1300 CE. Beginning with Chaco great houses in survey, excavate, and preserve sites in Bandelier the early 1000s and ending with Mesa Verde commu- and around Los Alamos National Laboratory. Copyrighted Material / A Grand and Isolated Place 3 Figure 1.3. Archaeological time periods and major events in the northern Rio Grande region. Because it is difficult to summarize all the people in turn worked on the plateau. research that has been conducted, we chose topics Paleoindian hunters, who arrived at the close of for this book that illuminate key aspects of the the Pleistocene geological epoch, were the first Pajarito story. Most of the chapters are focused on humans to use the Pajarito Plateau, from about the Puebloans who lived on the plateau between 9500 to 6000 BCE—though the only evidence of 1150 and 1550 or 1600 CE, but the authors also their presence is the occasional finely made spear or describe human use of the plateau during the earlier dart point. Warming temperatures and the extinc- Paleoindian and Archaic periods and during later tion of many big game mammals brought an end to historic times. the Paleoindian lifestyle and the beginning of a long Archaeologists commonly divide the Pueblo era era known as the Archaic, from about 6000 BCE to in the northern Rio Grande region into two cultural 500 CE. Archaic people, like their Paleoindian pred- periods, the Coalition (1150–1325) and the Classic ecessors, lived in small, mobile groups that ranged (1325–1550/1600). During the Coalition period, across the landscape, hunting mammals and foraging Puebloan immigrants arrived on the Pajarito Plateau for edible plants in a carefully scheduled yearly and built hundreds of small, mostly short-lived set- round tuned to the seasonal availability of each plant tlements. Rapid population growth during the or animal. In chapter 3, Bradley Vierra describes the 1200s and early 1300s led to competition for land unique challenges of Paleoindian and Archaic life and food. During the Classic period, people con- on the plateau. As he emphasizes, there is much to structed large villages, new religious beliefs and cer- envy in a hunting and gathering lifestyle. For one emonies emerged, and social and political life thing, most hunter-gatherers probably did not work became more complex as Puebloans adapted to as hard as later farming people.