What other lifestyles could the Ancestral Puebloans have chosen? Why do you think they chose to live in a large settlement? Answers will vary! Ancestral Puebloans could have pursued a nomadic lifestyle. Families could have established isolated plots of land , and extended families could have formed loosely connected networks. The village of Mesa Verde offered Ancestral Puebloans more opportunities. They could store food and other goods , making the economy more stable during times of drought or conflict, for example.
Mesa Verde also offered Ancestral Puebloans a greater range of services , such as aid for the injured or help with child-care. Ancestral Puebloans at Mesa Verde could also specialize their work. Some people could construct buildings such as Cliff Palace while others harvested crops, for instance.
Not everyone had to do everything themselves. Finally, the village of Mesa Verde created a strong sense of community among Ancestral Puebloans. The settlement's shared culture allowed residents to negotiate with neighboring communities or tribes in times of both peace and conflict.
Cliff Palace was just one part of Mesa Verde. What other types of dwellings do you think Ancestral Puebloans used? Besides cliff dwellings, residents of Mesa Verde lived in stone houses built on top of cliffs and on the valley floor.
They also lived in so-called " pit houses ," dwellings dug into the ground and covered with wood, thatch, or mud roofs.
The apartments at Cliff Palace had storage space, living quarters, and even a place for entertainment kivas. What features of modern apartments are missing from Cliff Palace? The apartments at Cliff Palace did not have specialized rooms for cooking kitchens. Recommended Stories. Nittany Lions Wire. Business Insider. The Oklahoman. FTW Outdoors. Charlotte Observer. MMA Junkie. NBC Sports. In The Know by Yahoo.
Fitted in the mortar are tiny pieces of stone called "chinking. Over the surface of many walls, the people decorated with earthen plasters of pink, brown, red, yellow, or white -- the first things to erode with time. Over the course of six centuries, Cliff Palace was visually transformed from an imposing assemblage of buildings,courtyards, and subterranean kivas to an array of stone structures rising from tons of rubble and debris.
Still remarkably impressive, the effects of time were nevertheless evident. However, with the 'discovery' of Cliff Palace in the late s, this gradual process of decay rapidly accelerated. Casual visitation and commercial exploration employed everything from pick and shovel to dynamite in an effort to recover all types of artifacts. In the end, the form and fabric of Cliff Palace was heavily damaged throughout its extent, with the natural processes of deterioration now altered by human activity.
Visit Preserving Cliff Palace to learn more about the work involved in preserving this remarkable piece of American history. All archeological sites, especially those with standing architecture like Cliff Palace, require continued assessment and maintenance. Natural factors such as rainfall and alcove spalling, as well as animals and insects, all impact the integrity of the site's fabric. If you compare them with European people of the same time period, they would have been about the same size.
Compared with today, the Ancestral Puebloan's average life span was relatively short, due, in part, to the high infant mortality rate. Most people lived an average of years, however some people did live into their 50s and 60s. Sandstone, mortar and wooden beams were the three primary construction materials for the cliff dwellings. The Ancestral Puebloans shaped each sandstone block using harder stones collected from nearby riverbeds.
The mortar between the blocks is a mixture of local soil, water and ash. Fitted in the mortar are tiny pieces of stone called "chinking.
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