THE ANCIENT ONES

The Ancestral Puebloan structures featured in the images on this website are all roughly 1000 years old and scattered throughout the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. Despite these structures being only 1000 years old, the Pueblo culture dates back thousands of years. Earlier in time, the people dwelled in deep subterranean pithouses of wood and earth; gradually, around approximately 700/750 CE, they began transitioning to aboveground stone-masonry structures like those seen in these images. The Ancestral Puebloans were primarily maize agriculturalists who developed sophisticated sociopolitical organizations, as well as vast and complex interaction systems that linked hundreds of communities and population centers across the Colorado Plateau.

Modern Pueblo people are descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans. Descendant communities include the Hopi villages of northeastern Arizona, the Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna villages of western New Mexico, as well as the communities along the Rio Grande, including Zia, Santa Ana, San Felipe, Santo Domingo, Cochiti, Taos, Picuris, Sandia, Isleta, Santa Clara, Ohkay Owingeh, San Ildefonso, Nambe, Tesuque, and Pojaoque.