The Anasazi, Research Paper Example

The Anasazi were a tribe located in what is now the Southwest United States in New Mexico. Their culture was defined by numerous aspects. They were known for beautifully unique crafting and pottery.  At their height, the population was barely above a few thousand, and only lasted a few generations. The factors that led to this included various things.  After this they disappeared without a trace of evidence as to where.  It is debated where they disappeared to.

The word Anasazi is actually a Navajo term, and throughout explorations of Southwest archaeology, the actual meaning of the name, the etymology and history behind it, has been discussed and debated. The idea of a ‘warlike’ tribe or even a kinship with the Navajo themselves is present within the name. However, the name seems to come from the simple fact that the Navajo didn’t know who they were or where they went.  “Because the Navajo did not know who had built the great ruins that they found there, they referred to those vanished former inhabitants as the Anasazi, meaning “the Ancient Ones.” (Diamond 176)

The culture of the Anasazi was interesting. Originally living in mud huts on the plateaus above, they at some point moved to the canyons, where they built cities into the stone walls.  Eventually it would grow beyond its meager beginnings. The remnants of their society include a vast collection of sites, including several city-like areas with smaller outlying villages.

The history of the Anasazi homes is very interesting.  As they started to build into the canyons, their homes became interconnected mazes of doorways, balconies, and ladders. These villages would have been much easier to defend than the mud huts that they had previously occupied. As they were built into the sides of cliffs, only one side would have faced attackers. Archaeologists have been able to determine that various sites in the region come from this same culture, as they all have similarities in design and planning, as well as various similar remnants left behind such as pottery and tools.

Anasazi pottery, weaving, and jewelry making were a primary reason for early expeditions to the American Southwest by researchers.  Techniques and stylizations varied across the region, and reflected the traditions that were unique to the tribe.  Materials were collected from the area, for example, the clays were dug from the nearby flood-planes, but as the culture grew so did the variety of raw materials they had to work with.  “We are beginning to understand the sophistication of the Anasazi, as scientist, artisan, and entrepreneur.  In this context, art becomes a physical record of the changing economic and social forces that shaped the fabric of Anasazi life, adding another dimension to our understanding of the past.” (Blinman 22)

The progress of crafting techniques within the culture actually underpinned the technical progress of the culture itself.  Pottery itself for example could only develop with the advent of newer firing techniques.  As the culture became increasingly dependent upon maize, the importance of ceramics grew, as clay pots began to be used for cooking. While in its early stages, those within Anasazi society may or may not have pursued crafting, as the society progressed, it became a symbol for the specialization of jobs. If you couldn’t farm, you could create crafts and sell them in order to make a living. Specialization of jobs is seen as a sign of civilization.  In this way, the creation of craftworks was a mark of civilized society for the Anasazi.

These economic and cultural factors that determined the Anasazi’s history are numerous.  The root causes of the decline of the Anasazi’s culture, however, are not always necessarily evident.  Within the article by Diamond, he discusses the particular site of Chaco canyon.  The interest is in why such a large society would be built and then abandoned.  One obvious explanation is that they simply grew too large to sustain themselves and left due to a lack of resources in the harsh environment.  Although the canyon’s resources were originally a boon to promoting a healthy society, as it grew, its resources dwindled.

The ability to collect water, a diversity of wildlife, as well as soil with nutrients ripe for farming are all reasons for a society to be developed here.  One issue is a problem that cultures throughout the American southwest have faced, water shortages.  Furthermore, the spreading culture would have needed much more forestry than the landscape would allow.  This, in turn, would have led to many food sources, including plants and animals, to start to disappear.  As the culture began to go from building simple mud huts to more complex architecture involving lumber, their growing population quickly outpaced what the local environment could keep up with.  The ultimate reason given for the abandoning of these various sites is that they implemented short term fixes to environmental problems which worked wondrously in the short term, but could not be sustained over time.

As food in Chaco canyon itself began to become scarcer, it became a center of import rather than export.  Instead of creating their own goods, the inhabitants of Chaco canyon and similar areas became dependent upon the goods created by others.  They no longer had the resources available to produce their own goods, and could no longer live independent and sustainably.  In this way, the dwellers there became dependent upon outside resources.  Once they had to rely on outside goods they no longer had any control over their environment, but were rather dependent upon the environment once more.  Without the ability to sustain itself, the canyon became dependent upon far reaching commodities, which would have been the underlying reason for its abandonment.  In the end, the deciding factor was a drought that left the land dry and uninhabitable, especially for a larger population of people.

Atrocities such as cannibalism and warfare are other possible reasons for the disappearance of Southwestern tribes.  While the Anasazi have been traditionally thought of as a peaceful tribe of hunter gatherers and farmers, some argue that there is evidence that this is not the case.  During the conquest of the Americas, reports of cannibalism were very high and in the twentieth century findings showed that this was mostly due to superstition and accounts based on word of mouth.

Since these findings, it has been largely argued that most native tribes do not actually practice cannibalism.  Some argue though that a descent into war and cannibalism is the actual cause of the societies collapse.  “Previously thought to be peaceful farmers living in harmony with one another, the Anasazi Indians were heralded as attaining an almost utopian society. However, recent findings have shed a new light on these simple desert dwellers.” (Clinger 6).  Despite these claims, it has been shown that although while its economy declined they faced no external political threats but rather only those from within.

While the Anasazi were able to create what is considered by some to be a small empire within the American Southwest, their inability to overcome the natural laws of their environment ultimately caused their downfall.  Although the root cause of this downfall is debated, it seems to be mainly due to the overexpansion of a people ill-equipped to deal with the long term implications of their culture’s growth.

It seems that over time, the people that made of the Anasazi may have lost hope in their homes, and dispersed to other more hospitable regions.  In doing so, they must have mixed with other natives that they came into contact with, or went to war with them and conquered or perished.  It is true, though, that many tribes that permeate the area years later claim ancestry from the Anasazi.  In this way, their ultimate fate wasn’t to die out, but to reassess their environment and do what was necessary to survive.  “In time, they mixed with other tribes and vanished as a separate culture. The Hopi, Zuni and Pueblo now living in the southwest believe they are the descendants of these ancient peoples.” (Cornish 8)  Although this is only conjecture, evidence seems to suggest that the Anasazi would eventually simply become the ancestors of other various tribes.

In the end the ultimate fate of the Anasazi remains unknown.  Their ability to create a society within the desolate climate of the southwest was remarkable, and that ingenuity led to a society that was able to transform the environment and adapt it to their needs.  This led to a culture that was advanced in its networks of trade, transportation, and architectural construction.  Eventually, their civilization would die out, for reasons that are still debated to this day.  Whether it be from drought or starvation, or even from succumbing to cannibalism or war, their society, which lasted only about one hundred years, would leave its mark on southwest history and culture years in the future.

Works Cited

Blinman, Eric. Anasazi Pottery: Evolution of a Technology. Expedition Vol. 35 No. 1.  1993. April 2014.

Clinger, Sarah. Anasazi Cannibalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005.  April 2014.

Cornish, Jim. The Anasazi: The Cliff Dwellers of Mesa. Princeton University Press, 2008. April 2014.

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed. Viking Publishing Group, 2005.