Anasazi

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Distribution area of ​​the culture
Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park
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The Anasazi are an archaeological culture of the Native Americans in the US states of Utah , Colorado , New Mexico and Arizona . Today the Anasazi are also known as Ancestral Puebloans or in the language of the Pueblo Indians as Chacoans or Hisatsinom . In 1936, the American archaeologist Alfred Kidder proposed the name Anasazi for the southwestern United States , which later became common. In the Navajo language , Anasazi means "the ancient enemies" (< anaa- "enemy", sází "ancestor"). The use of this term goes back to a dispute with the Hopi .

The culture is set for the period from about the turn of the ages to the present. The Anasazi tradition developed several variants in which tribes with different languages ​​were involved: Hopi, Tewa , Tiwa , Towa , Keres and Zuni , or their ancestors. The Anasazi tradition produced some of the most extraordinary monuments of the American Southwest, such as Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon and the Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park . Its stone buildings are characterized by towers, the multi-storey houses and the ritual circular recesses of the kivas .

Origin and phases

The Anasazi immigrated to the quadrangle where Utah and Colorado border on Arizona and New Mexico. They did not create any script, but instead created a lot of rock paintings and petroglyphs in addition to the architecture .

The origin of the Anasazi culture is assumed to have arisen from two cultures that influenced each other: The Mogollon culture and the nomadic groups of the Oshara culture (also called basketmakers ). The Mogollon took over the architectural knowledge of the basketmakers, who in turn took over agriculture from the Mogollon.

Around the year 700 the basketmakers had started building houses above ground. They mostly used half caves, which they walled up, built in windows and doors, and which they mainly used as storage for the winter. These houses, built in a row, were the first pueblos . These were erected free-standing or under rock overhangs, in this form known as cliff dwellings .

Culture Dating features
Basketmaker I. ? originally predicted hypothetically, no longer represented today
Basketmaker II 400 BC Chr. To 400 AD aceramic
Basketmaker III AD 400 to 700 Ceramics, pit houses
Pueblo I 700 to 900 AD Above-ground huts, weaving and pottery are more important than wickerwork
Pueblo II around 1000 AD Largest expansion of the Anasazi tradition, stone-built settlements
Pueblo III until 1281 AD Abandonment of many smaller settlements, concentration on multi-storey residential buildings
Pueblo IV C 1281 to c 1450 few large settlements (after 1540 the Spaniards invaded the southwest)
Pueblo V since 1450 today's Indian peoples of the Pueblo traditions

Cultural idiosyncrasies

A society based on the division of labor emerged especially in the Chaco Canyon , which lies in the west of what is now the US state of New Mexico . It took on complex structures, and states with rulers and a caste of priests emerged. The Anasazi peoples subjugated large areas of the American Southwest.

Lively construction activity began. From the 11th to the 13th centuries, most of the Cliff Dwellings were built. In particular, the settlement centers around the Chaco Canyon were connected with a road network that is estimated to have a total length of 2,400 km. The streets were about nine meters wide.

Chalcedony knife found in Chaco Culture National Historical Park

For their wedding, the Anasazi erected the tallest buildings in North America at the time, especially in the Chaco Canyon area, which were only surpassed by the skyscrapers in Chicago around 1880.

Turquoise and argillite are still processed today

The basis of the Anasazi tradition was agriculture, the main foods being corn , beans , pumpkins and sunflowers . Nevertheless, devastating drought disasters, aggravated by the overexploitation of nature (e.g. extensive deforestation) and the increased population, often forced large communities, for example Pueblo Bonito, to give up.

In addition, the Anasazi produced various pottery items that were bartered in a widespread trade. They also supplied turquoise to the Toltecs in what is now Mexico . Archaeologists, in turn, found mother-of-pearl jewelry in the Anasazi sites, which could only have come from the seashells on Mexico's coast, as well as parrot feathers and rare small copper bells. The Chaco Canyon played an important role.

Decline

A kiva (meeting room) in Colorado

A prolonged drought set in from 1150 AD , which probably peaked in 1270. Previously fertile areas in today's states of California , Nevada , Utah and Colorado became deserts or dry steppes. This led to a great migration. Groups of the Nun culture (ancestors of today's Paiute and Ute ) flooded in from California and groups of the Fremont culture (ancestors of the Diné , Apache , Yuma ) from Nevada and Utah. The Anasazi peoples also left their homeland under such pressure from 1270 and moved to the Rio Grande , the Sierra Madre del Norte or the Black Mesa .

For the Toltecs , the drought led to a civil war that collapsed the turquoise trade. Some groups stayed in the region and established pueblo societies, but many moved south or east. The Acoma , Laguna in the south and various small pueblo groups in the east are considered to be descendants of the Chaco-Anasazi.

The Anasazi tradition continues to this day in the aforementioned tribes.

Anasazi pueblos

Bone Finds and an ongoing scientific controversy

Since around 1980, finds of apparently roasted and boiled human bones - as in 1997 at Cowboy Wash near Dolores in Colorado - have repeatedly triggered scientific debates about their interpretation. Archaeological evidence was found that could point to a sharp rise in cannibalism in the mid-12th century. In addition, there is a controversial finding of human fecal remains that are said to contain human genetic material, which would prove that human tissue was eaten.

The traces may also come from execution rituals. In addition, it could be special forms of burial in which the bones were detached from the body.

Archeologist Christy Turner from Arizona is the spokesman for the group that assumes cannibalism among human bones. He identified more than 30 sites from the period between 900 and 1250 where human remains were found that show signs of processing. Together with his wife Jacqueline, he published these results in 1999 under the title Man Corn and hypothesized that Toltec invaders had terrorized the tribes of the region using such rituals.

Finds in the Sacred Ridge buildings from the Pueblo I period show cases of deliberate crippling, sometimes in connection with torture in the form of the bastinado . Massive blows to the side of the feet destroyed the tendons so that the victims could no longer walk. The torture on the soles of the feet was so severe and persistent that layers of bone peeled off. Such acts of violence were only possible in a sedentary, agrarian community. Based on the comparison with the story of Awatovi as a moral narrative, told by the Zuñi up to the present day, it can be assumed that the acts of violence had a social function. Through the exemplary use of violence against individuals, an entire population group could be suppressed.

A more recent date is the mtDNA evidence of the existence of a matrilineal elite or even a dynasty , whose continuity between approx. 800 and 1130 is documented through burials. Its end coincides with the disappearance of intensive agriculture in the region.

Well-known settlements of the Anasazi

literature

Web links

Commons : Anasazi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harald Eggebrecht: Suddenly gone. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Jared Diamond : Collapse. Why societies survive or perish. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-10-013904-6 .
  3. ↑ http://multimedia.zdf.de/2010/wissen/TerraX/BesiedelungAmerikas/Bilderserie2.swf
  4. ↑ Jared Diamond : Collapse. Why societies survive or perish. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-10-013904-6 .
  5. ^ Brian R. Billman, Patricia M. Lambert and Banks L. Leonard: Cannibalism, Warfare, and Drought in the Mesa Verde Region during the Twelfth Century AD In: American Antiquity . tape 65 , no. January 1 , 2000, doi : 10.2307 / 2694812 .
  6. ↑ Anna J. Oster Holtz: Hobbling and Torture as performative violance . In: Kiva, The Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History. Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, Volume 78, Issue 2 (Winter 2013), pages 123-144
  7. ↑ Michael Balter: Ancient DNA Yields Unprecedented Insights into Mysterious Chaco Civilization , in: scientificamerican.com, February 22, 2017.