The Mysteries of Cliff Dwellings

Throughout the Southwestern United States, hundreds of high cliff dwellings dot the landscape. Most require difficult climbs to access and are tucked into cracks, fissures or under large rock overhangs. A question has persisted for generations: why?

These structures were built over a thousand years ago when a myriad of different peoples and cultures lived throughout the continent.

The people who lived in cliff dwellings once lived on the flat land below and later abandoned the defensive structures in the cliffs as well. Archaeologists point to warfare, drought and even cannibalism.

We still can’t really agree on what these people were called. The term “Anasazi” is basically a slur used by the Navajo people who were hired by white men to rob the archaeological sites. The word has no relation to the Pueblo people who are the descendants of the cliff-dwellers. (Not to mention these people weren’t a single monolithic group.)

Craig Childs of the High Country News may have said it best,

“These people were Ancestral Puebloan, Hisatsinom, and Anasazi. And they were none of these.”