WOasisamerica is a term that was coined by Paul Kirchhoff and published in a 1954 article, and is used by some scholars, primarily Mexican anthropologists, for the broad cultural area defining pre-Columbian southwestern North America. It extends from modern-day Utah down to southern Chihuahua, and from the coast on the Gulf of California eastward to the Río Bravo river valley. Its name comes from its position in relationship with the similar regions of Mesoamerica and mostly nomadic Aridoamerica. The term Greater Southwest is often used to describe this region by American anthropologists.
WThe Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. The people and their archaeological culture are often referred to as "Anasazi". This, meaning "ancient enemies", was the name they were called by Navajo, who are not their descendents. Contemporary Puebloans object to the use of this term. The Ancestral Puebloans are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara Tradition, which developed from the Picosa culture.
WAnasazi State Park Museum is a state park and museum in Southern Utah, United States, featuring the ruins of an ancient Anasazi village referred to as the Coombs Village Site.
WThe Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. The people and their archaeological culture are often referred to as "Anasazi". This, meaning "ancient enemies", was the name they were called by Navajo, who are not their descendents. Contemporary Puebloans object to the use of this term. The Ancestral Puebloans are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara Tradition, which developed from the Picosa culture.
WThe Ansel Hall Ruin, also known as Cahone Ruin, is located in Cahone, Dolores County, Colorado. A pre-historic ruins from the Pueblo II period, the Northern San Juan pueblo was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
WThe Archaic–Early Basketmaker Era was an Archaic cultural period of ancestors to the Ancient Pueblo People. They were distinguished from other Archaic people of the Southwest by their basketry which was used to gather and store food. They became reliant on wild seeds, grasses, nuts and fruit for food and changed their movement patterns and lifestyle by maximizing the edible wild food and small game within a geographical region. Manos and metates began to be used to process seeds and nuts. With the extinction of megafauna, hunters adapted their tools, using spears with smaller projectile points and then atlatl and darts. Simple dwellings made of wood, brush and earth provided shelter.
WThe Basketmaker culture of the pre-Ancestral Puebloans began about 1500 BC and continued until about AD 750 with the beginning of the Pueblo I Era. The prehistoric American southwestern culture was named "Basketmaker" for the large number of baskets found at archaeological sites of 3,000 to 2,000 years ago.
WThe Basketmaker III Era also called the "Modified Basketmaker" period, was the third period in which Ancient Pueblo People were cultivating food, began making pottery and living in more sophisticated clusters of pit-house dwellings. Hunting was easier with the adoption of the bow and arrow.
WBears Ears National Monument is a United States national monument located in San Juan County in southeastern Utah, established by President Barack Obama by presidential proclamation on December 28, 2016. The monument's original size was 1,351,849 acres, which was reduced by 85% by President Donald Trump on December 4, 2017, an act subsequently challenged as allegedly illegal. The monument protects the public land surrounding the Bears Ears—a pair of buttes—and the Indian Creek corridor rock climbing area. The Native American names for the buttes have the same meaning in each of the languages represented in the region. The names are listed in the presidential proclamation as "Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jáa [sic], Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, Ansh An Lashokdiwe"—all four mean "Bears Ears".
WCanyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically-significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U.S. state of Colorado. The monument's 176,056 acres (71,247 ha) are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, as directed in the Presidential proclamation which created the site on June 9, 2000. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. This system comprises 32 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management to conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes recognized for their outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2005, over 6,000 individual archeological sites had been identified within the monument.
WCasa Malpaís is an archaeological site of the Ancestral Puebloans located near the town of Springerville, Arizona. The site is a nationally recognized archaeological site and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
WCasamero Pueblo is an archaeological site including the partially excavated and stabilized ruins of an 11th-century Ancestral Puebloan community in Prewitt, New Mexico in McKinley County. It was an outlier of Chaco Canyon. It is on the Trail of the Ancients Scenic Byway.
WCasas Grandes is a prehistoric archaeological site in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Construction of the site is attributed to the Mogollon culture. Casas Grandes has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the purview of INAH and a "Pueblo Mágico" since 2015.
WChaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in the American Southwest hosting a concentration of pueblos. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a remote canyon cut by the Chaco Wash. Containing the most sweeping collection of ancient ruins north of Mexico, the park preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian cultural and historical areas in the United States.
WCliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. The structure built by the Ancestral Puebloans is located in Mesa Verde National Park in their former homeland region. The cliff dwelling and park are in Montezuma County, in the southwestern corner of Colorado, in the Southwestern United States.
WCrow Canyon Archaeological Center is a 170-acre (69 ha) research center and "living classroom" located in southwestern Colorado, US, which offers experiential education programs for students and adults.
WCuarenta Casas is an archaeological site in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Construction of the site is attributed to the Mogollon culture.
WThe Early Basketmaker II Era was the first Post-Archaic cultural period of Ancient Pueblo People. The era began with the cultivation of maize in the northern American southwest, although there was not a dependence upon agriculture until about 500 BC. It is preceded by the Archaic-Early Basketmaker Era, and is followed by the Late Basketmaker II Era.
WEl Vallecito is an archaeological site located in the city of La Rumorosa, in the Tecate Municipality, Baja California, Mexico.
WThe Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah, where the culture's sites were discovered by local indigenous peoples like the Navajo and Ute. In Navajo culture, the pictographs are credited to people who lived before the flood. The Fremont River itself is named for John Charles Frémont, an American explorer. It inhabited sites in what is now Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from AD 1 to 1301. It was adjacent to, roughly contemporaneous with, but distinctly different from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples located to their south.
WThe Gallina or Largo-Gallina culture was an occupation sequence during the pre-Hispanic period in the American Southwest from approximately 1050 to 1300. The culture was located in north-central New Mexico roughly north of the Jemez Mountains, and was named after the Rio Gallina, which runs through the region.
WThe Puebloans of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico are descended from various peoples who had settled in the area, and shaped by the arrival of Spanish colonizers led by Juan de Oñate at the end of the 16th Century.
WHohokam was a society in the North American Southwest in what is now part of Arizona, United States, and Sonora, Mexico. Archeologists recognize Hohokam as a distinct culture, with constituents nominated as Hohokam people.
WHuápoca is an archaeological site located 36 kilometers west of Ciudad Madera, in the Huápoca Canyon region, northwest of the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
WThe indigenous peoples of the North American Southwest are those in the current states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada in the western United States, and the states of Sonora and Chihuahua in northern Mexico. An often quoted statement from Erik Reed (1964) defined the Greater Southwest culture area as extending north to south from Durango, Mexico to Durango, Colorado and east to west from Las Vegas, Nevada to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Other names sometimes used to define the region include "American Southwest", "Northern Mexico", "Chichimeca", and "Oasisamerica/Aridoamerica". This region has long been occupied by hunter-gatherers and agricultural people.
WKinishba Ruins is a 600-room Mogollon great house archaeological site in eastern Arizona and is administered by the White Mountain Apache Tribe. It is located on the present-day Fort Apache Indian Reservation, in the Apache community of Canyon Day. As it demonstrates a combination of both Mogollon and Ancestral Puebloan cultural traits, archaeologists consider it part of the historical lineage of both the Hopi and Zuni cultures. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark.
WThe Late Basketmaker II Era was a cultural period of Ancient Pueblo People when people began living in pit-houses, raised maize and squash, and were proficient basket makers and weavers. They also hunted game and gathered wild foods, such as pinyon nuts.
WThe Manuelito Complex, also known as Manuelito Canyon Historic District, is a complex of archaeological sites in central western New Mexico. Located in and around Manuelito Canyon, roughly midway between Gallup, New Mexico and Lupton, Arizona, it includes an important collection of Ancestral Pueblo ruins, with an estimated occupation period of 700-1350 AD. The area was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
WMesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States.
WThe Mimbres is a 91-mile-long (146 km) river in southwestern New Mexico. It forms from snow pack and runoff on the south-western slopes of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness in the Black Range at 33°06′58″N 107°51′04″W in Grant County. The river ends in a small endorheic basin east of Deming, New Mexico in Luna County. The uplands watershed are administered by the US Forest Service, while the land in the Mimbres Valley is mostly privately owned. The upper reaches of the river are perennial. The river flows south from the Black Range and the surface flow of the river dissipates in the desert north of Deming, but the river bed and storm drainage continue eastward, any permanent flow remaining underground. The Mimbres River Basin has an area of about 13,000 km² (5,140 mi²) and extends slightly into northern Chihuahua.
WNavajo National Monument is a National Monument located within the northwest portion of the Navajo Nation territory in northern Arizona, which was established to preserve three well-preserved cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloan people: Keet Seel, Betatakin, and Inscription House. The monument is high on the Shonto plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system, west of Kayenta, Arizona. It features a visitor center with a museum, three short self-guided trails, two small campgrounds, and a picnic area.
WThe Pueblo I Period was the first period in which Ancestral Puebloans began living in pueblo structures and realized an evolution in architecture, artistic expression, and water conservation.
WThe Pueblo II Period was the second pueblo period of the Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners region of the American southwest. During this period people lived in dwellings made of stone and mortar, enjoyed communal activities in kivas, built towers and water conversing dams, and implemented milling bins for processing maize. Communities with low-yield farms traded pottery with other settlements for maize.
WThe Pueblo III Period was the third period, also called the "Great Pueblo period" when Ancestral Puebloans lived in large cliff-dwelling, multi-storied pueblo, or cliff-side talus house communities. By the end of the period, the ancient people of the Four Corners region migrated south into larger, centralized pueblos in central and southern Arizona and New Mexico.
WThe Pueblo IV Period was the fourth period of ancient pueblo life in the American Southwest. At the end of prior Pueblo III Period, Ancestral Puebloans living in the Colorado and Utah regions abandoned their settlements and migrated south to the Pecos River and Rio Grande valleys. As a result, pueblos in those areas saw a significant increase in total population.
WThe Pueblo V Period is the final period of ancestral puebloan culture in the American Southwest, or Oasisamerica, and includes the contemporary Pueblo peoples. From the previous Pueblo IV Period, all 19 of the Rio Grande valley pueblos remain in the contemporary period. The only remaining pueblo in Texas is Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, and the only remaining pueblos in Arizona are maintained by the Hopi Tribe. The rest of the Pueblo IV pueblos were abandoned by the 19th century.
WSalado culture, or Salado Horizon, was a human culture in the upper Salt River of the Tonto Basin in southeastern Arizona from approximately 1150 CE through the 15th century.
WThe Sinagua were a pre-Columbian culture that occupied a large area in central Arizona from the Little Colorado River, near Flagstaff, to the Verde River, near Sedona, including the Verde Valley, area around San Francisco Mountain, and significant portions of the Mogollon Rim country, between approximately 500 CE and 1425 CE.
WYucca House National Monument is a United States National Monument located in Montezuma County, Colorado between the towns of Towaoc and Cortez, Colorado. Yucca House is a large, unexcavated Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site.