Native American cliff dwellings
Native American cliff dwellings are remarkable architectural formations primarily associated with the Anasazi culture, which thrived in the Southwestern United States between 500 CE and the early 1300s. These structures were often constructed in natural cliff overhangs or caves, particularly in the Four Corners region, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. Noteworthy sites include well-preserved examples such as Betatakin, Cliff Palace, and Spruce Tree House. The Anasazi people initially built communal pit houses, evolving over time to create multi-story cliff dwellings comprising living spaces, storage rooms, and sacred kivas, accommodating large communities.
The construction techniques utilized stone, mud, and wood, reflecting their advanced architectural skills and adaptation to their environment. The reasons for the eventual abandonment of these cliff dwellings in the 1300s remain speculative, but they coincided with the arrival of European settlers and subsequent archaeological interest in the 19th century. Today, many cliff dwelling sites are protected within National Parks and Monuments, preserving their cultural and historical significance. These sites continue to attract interest from both scholars and visitors seeking to understand the rich heritage of Native American peoples.
Native American cliff dwellings
Date: c. 500-1400
Location: Colorado plateau in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah
Cultures affected: Anasazi, Western Pueblo tribes (Hopi, Navajo, Zuni)
Cliff dwellings identified with the Southwest’s Anasazi culture were constructed between 500 c.e. and the climax of what archaeologists define as the Pueblo III period, between 1100 and 1300. While remains of these dwellings, some remarkably intact, have been found over a wide area of the Colorado plateau, the most notable sites are found in the Four Corners area, where the boundaries of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. The largest and best-preserved (or restored) of these ruins include Betatakin, Cliff Palace, Fire Temple, Oak Tree House, Spruce Tree House, and Square Tower House. During the twentieth century the ruins of nearly all cliff dwellings have been incorporated either into National Historical Parks, as at Capitol Reef (Utah), Chaco Culture Historical Park (New Mexico), and Mesa Verde (Colorado), or into National Monuments, as at Bandelier (Colorado), Canyon de Chelly (Arizona), Gila Cliff Dwellings (New Mexico), Hovenweep (Colorado and Utah), Montezuma Castle (Arizona), Navajo (Arizona), Tonto (Arizona), and Walnut Canyon (Arizona).
A culture based on settled agriculture combined with supplemental hunting and gathering, and distinguished by its versatile and beautifully crafted basketwork, the Anasazi originally lived in pueblos of circular pit houses constructed in communal clusters. From as early as 500 c.e., some of these dwellings were built in the numerous cliff overhangs and caves common to the Colorado plateau, particularly in the Four Corners area. Early Anasazi housing was represented by pit houses lined with stone slabs and with wooden roofs and entrances through the roof or passageways. In time, the construction of these structures was carried above ground, retaining the sunken portions as kivas—sacred rooms for men. Built of stone, mud, and wood, some of them three stories high, cliff dwellings, with their terraced apartments, housed scores of people—more than two hundred in Mesa Verde’s Cliff Palace—and included courtyards, storage rooms, and kivas. In these regards they continued the essentials of older pueblo architectural traditions. There is only informed speculation about why the cliff dwellings were abandoned during the 1300’s.
The “opening” of the Southwest by white Americans, facilitated in the nineteenth century by the Gadsden Purchase, the discovery of gold in California, and the Mormon settlement of Utah, drew attention to previous occupants of the region, beginning with Lieutenant James Simpson’s descriptions of the cliff dwellings and other ruins in Canyon de Chelly and Chaco Canyon, written while he was fighting the Navajos in 1849. Subsequent archaeological interest was stimulated by the explorations of John Wesley Powell and early archaeological work by Cosmos and Victor Mindeleff in the early 1890’s. These studies were expanded by Richard Wetherill, Adolph Bandelier, Gustav Nordensjold, and (most important for preservation of the cliff dwellings) Jesse Walter Fewkes.