The Depopulation of the Northern San Juan Region

Across much of the Colorado Plateau, the mid-to-late Pueblo II (Chaco) period (AD 1000–1140) and Pueblo III (post-Chaco) period (AD 1140–1280) were tumultuous times (Mills et al. 2018). During the beginning of this timeframe, communities organized into a large, regional system (i.e., the Chaco regional system) (Kantner and Kintigh 2006; Lekson 2006; Mills et al. 2018). By the mid-AD 1100s, this system fractured into smaller organizational entities focused at the household- and village-levels (Glowacki 2015). By the last decade of the thirteenth century AD, the entire region was depopulated and never permanently resettled by ancestral Pueblo people. To date, most prior research has attributed these changes to climatic fluctuations (Benson et al. 2007; Bocinsky 2014; Dean 1996a, 2010; Kuckelman, chapter 19 in this volume; Schwindt et al. 2016; Van West 1996), particularly in southeastern Utah, where precipitation and available farmlands are more marginal than areas to the east (Glowacki 2010; Wright 2010). However, recent research demonstrates that social factors also contributed to major changes in ancestral Pueblo societies (Glowacki 2010, 2011, 2015; Ortman et al. 2000). Donna Glowacki (2010, 202–203) argues that a key component to understanding the depopulation of the region is “a careful analysis of social and cultural intraregional variation,” as a myriad of social and cultural differences fostered “the circumstances that preceded the migration.” Understanding the spatial and temporal sequence of settlement distribution during this pivotal period is critical for explaining the depopulation of the region just prior to AD 1300 (Glowacki 2010). In this chapter, we review prior dendrochronological assessments for the timing of the depopulation in the greater Cedar Mesa area (figure 18.2) and provide new data from recent research that substantially refines our understanding of local- and large-scale migrations from this area and the larger region.

Dendrochronological Assessments of the Depopulation

Research focused on depopulation processes in the greater San Juan River drainage has been largely dependent on the compilation of large tree-ring datasets recovered from sites across the area (Dean 2010; Matson et al. 2015; Varien 1999, 2010). Researchers working with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center have been instrumental in the generation and compilation of these datasets (Nash and Rogers 2014; Schwindt et al. 2016; Varien 1999, 2010). The regional tree-ring database at Crow Canyon began with Mark Varien’s (1999) dissertation research on the northern San Juan region. To collect these data, Varien went to the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) at the University of Arizona and Xeroxed all the paper records for dates in their file for his study area. During the second Village Ecodynamics Project (VEP II)—led by Crow Canyon Archaeological Center (see Kohler et al., chapter 3 in this volume)—Steve Nash was contracted to update those data with dates analyzed after about 1995, when Varien compiled his data. The spatial coverage of both datasets is restricted to sites in the northern San Juan River drainages. Varien (2010) analyzed the combined data from these prior datasets, focusing on the latest-dated sites in the northern San Juan region that contained at least ten cutting dates. Varien (2010, 23–25) found that the latest tree-ring dates from this region were AD 1281, suggesting the depopulation of the region was complete by the middle-to-late AD 1280s. The latest dates from the cliff dwellings in Tsegi Canyon area of the Kayenta region are slightly later, at AD 1286, and these sites were likely depopulated between AD 1290 and 1300 (Dean 1969, 1996b). Prior research (Matson, Lipe, and Curewitz 2015; Matson, Lipe, and Haase 1988; Varien 2010) proposed that the migrations from the greater Cedar Mesa area occurred several decades earlier; by AD 1250, the depopulation of the Cedar Mesa area was well underway.

Dendrochronology and the Depopulation of the Greater Cedar Mesa Area

The majority of dendrochronological assessments of ancestral Pueblo sites in the Cedar Mesa area occurred as the result of the Cedar Mesa Project in the 1970s and 1980s (Lipe and Matson 2007; Matson et al. 1988). The Cedar Mesa Project conducted extensive surveys, limited test excavations, and tree-ring sampling efforts in several large study units spread across the landscape and primarily focused on drainages on the western portion of the mesa.

Among many other important contributions made by the Cedar Mesa Project, R. G. Matson and his colleagues (1988) found that by the beginning of the Pueblo III period (AD 1150–1200), ancestral Pueblo populations began to move from mesa tops and into canyon settings (see Bedell 2000; Matson et al. 1988; Morton 2002). This same process also took place in the central Mesa Verde region in the east (see Glowacki et al., chapter 12 in this volume). In these settings, most settlements constructed in the late AD 1100s and early 1200s were built in alcoves and along canyon shelves and bottoms, usually near reliable springs and where access to canyon bottoms and mesa tops was relatively direct. Subsistence farming likely occurred on the mesa tops, whereas other domesticated and encouraged crops were grown in well-watered canyon bottom settings (Matson 1991; Morton 2002).

Varien’s (2010, table 1.2) analysis of the last decades of ancestral Pueblo occupation of the greater Cedar Mesa area included four tree-ring dated sites that yielded ten or more cutting dates at, or after, AD 1260. These sites include 42SA12785, 42SA5114, 42SA256 (see figure 18.2 and table 18.1), and the Moon House Complex, which is itself composed of three separate loci each with distinct site numbers (designated as M 1–3 [42SA5004, 42SA5005, and 42SA25380 respectively]) and is the site with the largest quantity of cutting dates (n = 79) and the latest dates. Richard Ahlstrom (1985) and William Bloomer (1989) determined that the largest construction events in the complex likely started about AD 1240, continued through the 1260s, and to some extent was occupied until the mid-to-late 1270s.

Table 18.1. Table of previous and newly compiled tree-ring date assemblages, date clusters (based on Ahlstrom’s definition of a tree-ring date cluster [1985:60]), and site attributes for sites dating to the AD 1250s and 1260s in the greater Cedar Mesa area.

Since the time of Varien’s (2010, table 1.2) publication—which includes data from 42SA256—Tom Windes and his Cedar Mesa Wood Project “Wood Rat” crews collected an additional seventy-five dates from the site. Each of these sites yielded samples from wooden beams in structures and work areas that dated to the AD 1250s and earlier. Windes’s analysis of these data indicates that most of the AD 1260s dates were from newly constructed or remodeled rooms and features in sites that had already been occupied in the decade, or decades, prior. These late dates, however, also indicate where some of the remaining populations in the area were residing and where they continued to build a limited number of new buildings and remodeled older structures in the years leading to depopulation.

In addition to the sites above, six additional sites in the VEP III database were identified with tree-ring dates in the AD 1250s, and at least twice as many have dates in the AD 1240s (Bannister et al. 1969; Matson et al. 2015; Varien 2010). This reduced frequency of dates in the 1250s—after such a strong presence of dates in prior decades—caused Matson and his colleagues (1988) to argue that the depopulation of Natural Bridges and Cedar Mesa was well underway by this decade. These sites are distributed across the greater Cedar Mesa landscape and indicate that while small, the population of the area at the beginning of the second half of the thirteenth century AD was distributed across this long-lived cultural landscape. Matson and his colleagues (2015, 343) interpreted these data as evidence that the majority of the Natural Bridges area had been vacated by about AD 1250, that Cedar Mesa was almost completely depopulated by 1260 (Matson et al. 2015, 343), and that the Moon House Complex was one of just a few sites occupied by a small holdout population that remained in the area in the AD 1260s and early 1270s. They concede, however, that the occupation of Comb and Butler Washes, and areas further east, may have been occupied a decade or more later.

New Tree-Ring Data from Sites in the Greater Cedar Mesa Area

To this large body of existing data, we provide a suite of new tree-ring dates from sites occupied in the last decades of ancestral Pueblo occupation in southeastern Utah. We collected these data during two separate, but related, projects focused on obtaining tree-ring dates from cliff dwellings in the canyons. The Cedar Mesa Wood Project (CMWP) (Windes 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018a, 2018b, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022) is a long-term project aimed at creating site chronologies of threatened, intact cliff dwellings across the area. The second project, the Cedar Mesa Building Murals Project (CMBMP), was a multi-year program aimed at creating an inventory of intact building murals in cliff dwellings across the area (Bellorado 2015, 2020, 2021). Between 2013 and 2017, the project focused on creating a seriation of plaster mural decoration styles by collecting and dating tree-ring samples from the wooden roofs and intramural beams of structures with murals. Fieldwork methodologies for both projects included site and structure mapping, infield artifact tallies, and sampling of available and potentially datable wooden beams. Whereas the CMWP conducted extensive tree-ring dating and condition assessments of all wooden elements at the sites visited by the project (e.g., Windes and McKenna 2001), the CMBMP used a more-focused approach that targeted beams in contexts that could help to date mural composition events.

Both projects each documented dozens of intact structures and mapped the contexts of their wooden construction members in detail (see one example in Figure 18.3). During these projects, we collected hundreds of tree-ring samples from intact structures. Once collected, the samples were analyzed at the LTRR by lab technicians and by the lead author of this chapter (see Bellorado 2020, chap. 5). Based on the results, we identified thirteen sites that had significant construction events in the AD 1250s and ten additional sites that had evidence of construction in the 1260s (figures 18.2 and 18.3 and table 18.1). One additional site, 42SA256, was revisited, and a suite of seventy-five new dates were obtained. As of the writing of this chapter, we have identified a total of eighteen sites with dates in the AD 1250s. We also identified sixteen sites with dates in the AD 1260s, some of which also have 1250s and earlier dates. Our four new latest dates consist of two near-cutting dates of AD 1267+B and 1268+v from 42SA6678, a noncutting date of 1268+vv from 42SA5814, and a cutting date of 1267B from 42SA6654 (table 18.1). These new dates place these sites as immediate contemporaries with both the Moon House Complex and 42SA12785, from which a near-cutting date of AD 1268+B from the M-2 unit (42SA5004), a noncutting date of 1267++B from the M-1 unit (42SA5005), and a cutting date of 1267GB from 42SA12785 had been reported. These dates from the Moon House Complex and 42SA12785 were previously identified as the latest dates from the greater Cedar Mesa area (Ahlstrom 1985; Bloomer 1989; Matson et al. 2015; Varien 2010).

Settlement Location and Site Attributes in the Last Decades of Occupation

While late sites are distributed across the landscape (figure 18.2), the majority of the latest sites where we worked are concentrated on the eastern side of Cedar Mesa; all of these eastern sites are situated in relatively similar areas halfway between the crest of Cedar Mesa—or Elk Ridge to the west, and Comb Wash to the east. Two of these sites are located in canyon-head settings with Hovenweep-style towers (Bredthauer 2010), and the rest are scattered in canyons across the greater Cedar Mesa area. Other than 42SA12785, which is north of the Bears Ears buttes and Elk Ridge (Walker 1977), all sites with AD 1260s dates in our dataset are in the canyons of Cedar Mesa proper. Often, these latest-occupied sites appear positioned to take advantage of (1) large patches of deep soils on mesa top settings, where dryland and runoff farming would have been possible; (2) persistent springs and seeps just below canyon rims and in the bottoms of the deepest canyons; and (3) easily defendable canyon shelf and alcove locations (figure 18.3), which are hard to access.

Prior studies (Glowacki 2010; Matson et al. 2015; Wright 2010) have demonstrated that compared to settlement locations in the McElmo and central Mesa Verde areas, farming conditions were relatively marginal in the greater Cedar Mesa area. Several studies (Ahlstrom et al. 1995; Salzer 2000, Salzer and Kipfmueller 2005; Windes 2018a, 2020; Wright 2010) have shown that the AD 1250–1275 period was one of the coldest and driest quarter centuries of the entire ancestral Pueblo occupation of the larger region and that southeastern Utah was often relatively drier than other parts of the region. Thomas Windes (2020, 14) also documented that the extreme cold and hot temperatures on Cedar Mesa are more severe than places like Chaco Canyon. It should be of no surprise then that the latest settlements documented in this study are situated adjacent to some of the deepest and most productive soils available in the area, particularly since the reduced population levels would have resulted in less competition over the use of these farmlands.

Most of the latest sites were situated in defensive settings, including hard-to-reach alcoves and shelves on the walls of the deepest canyons. They were placed in locations that were difficult to reach and where access was restricted to narrow ledges that required the use of hand-and-toe holds, a series of ladders that could have been pulled up when needed, or, in one case, a wooden bridge across a deep chasm along a shelf below the canyon rim (figure 18.3). These sites often have thick enclosing walls with sealable door entries and small viewport features with directed views of access points. While secure, entry to some sites was so precarious that bringing water and other resources into them and providing access for elders and juveniles must have been difficult. These inconveniences, however, seemed to have been outweighed by the need for residences to be defendable against marauders, and we interpret site placement in hard-to-access locations as evidence of pronounced social strife during the final decades of occupation.

Although these sites were hard to reach, their occupants were not hiding, as the back walls of the alcoves (above the masonry rooms) or the rooms themselves were decorated with pictographs composed of large circles that were painted with brightly colored, bold decorations (figure 18.4a). These icons likely represented the large coiled-basketry shields that have been identified from Pueblo III period contexts (Bellorado 2020; Jolie 2018; Schaafsma 2000). These shield images appear to have symbolized both the ability of the site’s occupants to defend their homes (Schaafsma 2000) and to communicate their membership in particular clans, warrior societies, or religious sodalities (Bellorado 2020). In addition to large, bold pictographs, several sites had bold, bichrome-plaster murals decorating the exterior surfaces of a few special rooms (Bellorado 2020; Ortman 2008) (figure 18.4b).

The vernacular styles of architecture documented at many of the sites in the study area with mid-to-late AD 1200s construction were composed of wet-laid, single course, masonry as well as jacal architecture (figure 18.4c). At least a few sites in the area have habitation rooms constructed with front walls of jacal with entryways, and some even have slab or masonry entrybox complexes, Kayenta-style in form (Dean 1969, 27). Jacal construction is rarely seen in the central Mesa Verde region, and entryboxes even less so, but both were common features of construction in the Kayenta region (Dean 1969, 25; Geib 2011, 319). We also documented numerous examples of cotton textile-production evidence (i.e., weaving tools, loom anchors, loom parts, and discarded raw material refuse) at these late sites, indicating that cotton textile production was a full-fledged industry across the study area (Bellorado 2015, 2020, 2021; Crabtree and Bellorado 2016). Cotton weaving was a technology and practice that also had roots in the Kayenta region (Kent 1957, 1983; Lipe 1967; Magers 1975; Teague 1998).

When considered together—and with the frequent (though low) quantities of Tsegi Orange Wares, Tusayan Corrugated Gray Wares, and Tusayan White Wares (Bellorado 2015, 2021; Lipe and Glowacki 2011; Windes 2019), as well as square kivas and flat kiva roofs—these late Pueblo III period occupants of the greater Cedar Mesa area had strong material (as well as likely ideological) connections with groups in the Kayenta region. Other types of architecture (i.e., McElmo-style masonry [large blocky sandstone coursing with thick mortar joints], T-shaped doorways, Mesa Verde Region–style towers, cribbed-roof kivas with pilasters), and Mesa Verde ceramic traditions bespeak connections with the central Mesa Verde region to the east. The designs on painted white wares in the Cedar Mesa area contain a large proportion of cotton-textile-based motifs, typical in the Kayenta region but rarer on Mesa Verde white ware tradition ceramics from the central Mesa Verde area (Bellorado 2020; Crabtree and Bellorado 2016; Ortman 2000). This unique pattern of hybridity between the Mesa Verde and Kayenta material traditions define the cultural practices and local traditions of the greater Cedar Mesa area during the thirteenth century AD. It is this distinctive suite of mixed features that were maintained by groups leaving the Cedar Mesa area during the depopulation and took hold in the areas where they immigrated. For example, Schleher et al. (chapter 14 in this volume) suggest that due to the prevalence of cotton textile-based designs on white ware pottery, at least some of the population of Sand Canyon Pueblo may have immigrated from southeastern Utah, where these design systems were more common. While the full suite of hybrid features of potential Cedar Mesa area origin have not been identified at Sand Canyon Pueblo to date, the distinct cotton-textile-based designs stand out as recognizably different from the local pattern of coiled-basketry-based design systems that were more common at the contemporaneously occupied site of Goodman Point Pueblo and across the central Mesa Verde area (Linford 2018; Ortman 2000).

Implications for the Depopulation of Cedar Mesa and the Larger Region

The addition of newly tree-ring dated sites to the dataset of those occupied after AD 1250 illuminate a significant amount of new construction during the AD 1250s, and at least a limited amount of new construction and remodeling in the 1260s; this changes our current view of the depopulation of the Cedar Mesa area dramatically. These data demonstrate that rather than a small holdout population at the Moon House Complex, a substantial population remained in the area until the early-to-mid AD 1270s, consisting of sixteen known sites (there are likely many more). This population built its habitations in hard-to-reach, defendable locations near sizable springs and water sources and in places where both canyon bottoms and mesa tops were easily accessible.

We have not attempted to formally estimate the size of the late population in the AD 1260s, but we provide preliminary estimates for consideration here. Matson and his colleagues (2015, 334) estimated that the average size of a family unit was comprised of five individuals. Thus, if we assume that each of the sixteen sites with AD 1260s components were occupied by one to three families, then a minimum of 80 to 240 individuals could have occupied these sites (table 18.1). Based on our documentation and analysis, however, we suspect that between 45 and 73 separate habitation units were built or remodeled in these sixteen sites in the 1260s, suggesting a more reasonable but still conservative occupation estimate of at least 225 to 365 occupants during this decade. Given the frequency of late dates and the likelihood that similar sites existed in the immediate area (particularly on the eastern side of Cedar Mesa), we suspect that the population in the AD 1250s, 1260s, and 1270s was much larger than previously proposed.

Additionally, Bellorado (2020, 2021) identified a style of painted bichrome building murals inside kivas, in gallery spaces, and on the exteriors of, and above, special buildings at five of the sites dated to the AD 1260s (42SA1763, 5005, 9309, 9310, and 42SA34831) (table 18.1). This style of mural was made using a combination of red-and-white, red-and-yellow, or red-and-green bichrome designs that often depict either landscape-based design elements or cotton textile motifs, or both (figure 18.4b). Based on tree-ring dates from a total of nine structures with painted bichrome decorations in the project area, Bellorado (2020) determined that this mural style developed in the area during the mid-to-late AD 1240s or early 1250s and continued until the final depopulation of the area in the early-to-mid 1270s. Bellorado (2020, fig. 5.15) also found this style of mural was produced in structures ten to twenty years earlier in the Cedar Mesa area than the rest of the region. In lieu of available tree-ring dates at sites with few or no chronological controls, the presence of this style of mural provides evidence that structures were occupied during, or after, the AD 1250s. In addition to the nine dated structures with both painted murals and tree-ring dates, Bellorado (2020, 2021, Table 7.3) identified the presence of painted murals in fifty-two additional structures that were mostly composed of kivas and habitation rooms that likely represent individual family units at a total of forty-six sites distributed across the greater Cedar Mesa area and that were occupied after AD 1250. Since these sites often contained 1–3 contemporary habitation units, they could reasonably account for an additional 280–560 people, if not more. Since Bellorado’s sample of painted structures was limited by access to sites, mural preservation, and the presence of datable wood that he sampled, there are likely many more sites with painted decorations in the area that date to the last decades of the thirteenth century AD occupation of the area. These settlements were more widely dispersed when compared to the contemporaneous large, aggregated pueblos in the west central Mesa Verde, McElmo, and Mesa Verde Proper subregions of the northern San Juan region (Glowacki 2015, fig. 3; Glowacki and Ortman 2012; Ortman et al. 2000; Varien 1999) and in the Tsegi Canyon area (Dean 1969), but they still formed integrated communities that were loosely concentrated in a variety of canyon settings.

We unequivocally demonstrate occupation until AD 1270 and maybe later, yet our data also show that the number of dates declined in the years and decades before our latest dates, just as they were also in decline in the other regions. This decrease strongly suggests that immigration and the beginning of complete depopulation began in each area before the latest date. Our data from the greater Cedar Mesa area provide new evidence that indicates depopulation of the Four Corners area began before the onset of the Great Drought, and it likely indicates migration was due to many factors, both environmental and social.

Implications for the Depopulation of the Larger Region

Data presented here allow us to make important observations about the depopulation of the broader region at the end of the thirteenth century AD. First, the population size of the greater Cedar Mesa area between AD 1260 and 1270 was larger than previously proposed, and the timing of the emigration from the area was more protracted than previously suspected. Our data support prior suggestions by Glowacki (2015, 199) that the depopulation of communities and the larger social landscape likely occurred on the scale of the household. While many groups left prior to AD 1250, those who remained lived in small settlements scattered across the area for another one to two decades before emigrating. It is unlikely that occupation could have persisted if the area did not meet some minimum population threshold; an important finding of our research is demonstrating that there were enough people remaining to meet this threshold for viability into at least the AD 1260s.

Like communities in the east, the latest Cedar Mesa occupants appear to have developed new forms of civic-ceremonial architecture and religious practices. Unlike population centers in the east where large bi-wall, tri-wall, and D-shape structures were built (see Lekson, chapter 17 in this volume), new architectural forms of civic-ceremonial architecture in the Cedar Mesa region were smaller in size. These new types of communal architecture take the form of galleries with large windows (i.e., at Moon House M-1 [42SA5005]), at least one rectilinear great kiva, and one great kiva in an alcove (Bellorado 2020), many of which were also decorated with painted bichrome kiva murals with landscape referents (figure 18.4b and d). The bichrome-style murals found in kivas, coupled with the use of jacal construction and evidence of specialized cotton weaving, are attributes that provide evidence for immigrants from the Cedar Mesa area living at aggregated sites in the central Mesa Verde region and beyond (i.e., the middle San Juan, Canyon de Chelly, and the Gallina regions) (Bellorado 2017, 2020, fig. 5.14).

Perhaps the most well-known example of these bichrome murals with cotton textile and landscape referents are found in the third story room of Cliff Palace’s four-story tower (Room 11) (Bellorado 2020, fig. 5.14c; Fewkes 1911, 42; Malville and Putnam 1993, fig. 5; Nordenskiöld [1893] 1990 [1893], fig. 78; Ortman 2012, fig. 10.3y). J. McKim Malville and Claudia Putnam (1993, 94–97) proposed that this mural was used as a calendrical observation station and to mark recuring astronomical events, including summer and winter solstices. Scott Ortman (2008, 244) found several examples in the central Mesa Verde region where similar murals were painted in second- or third-story rooms where the path of the sun, moon, and stars, and surrounding landscape views would have been visible throughout much of the year.

In the Cedar Mesa area and across the region, Bellorado (2020, 2021) also found that bichrome murals were often painted in or on rooms in elevated locations where astronomical events could have been observed. Bellorado (2021, 230) documented one example in the Cedar Mesa area that was painted on the exterior of a room in a perched alcove, which blends both landscape and textile imagery, and that functioned as a winter solstice marking device. At midday, during several days surrounding the winter solstice, the low angle of the sun causes a roof beam protruding from the structure to cast a shadow across the center of a series of painted concentric circles in the mural (figure 18.4d). Just before noon, the tip of the shadow pierces the centermost of the concentric circles. Based on these observations, we suggest that across the region bichrome murals in or on rooms in elevated locations were used, in part, as astronomical observatories. Our data show that this mural style developed earlier in the southeastern Utah but that it quicky spread across the region as the depopulation of the area began. This style of mural, and its strong association with astronomical observations, may represent the material expression of one set of ritual practices, ceremonies, and cosmological beliefs that developed in the greater Cedar Mesa area and then spread across the region as the depopulation unfolded.

Kuwanwisiwma and Bernardini (chapter 5 in this volume) discuss oral histories about specific clans of Hopi ancestors that moved from the greater Cedar Mesa area (i.e., the Bears Ears area) to the central Mesa Verde region. They explain the processes whereby clans local to the Cedar Mesa area with knowledge of particular ceremonies were recruited by communities in the central Mesa Verde region and vice versa. While they do not discuss murals, weaving technologies, or architectural styles in relation to these ceremonies or the clans that owned them, the spread of these features and technologies into new areas could be viewed as be the material signatures of these or other groups, their ritual practices, and specialized ceremonies being recruited by communities across the region. Whether viewed through the lens of migration or ritual recruitment of clans into far-flung communities, the depopulation of the greater Cedar Mesa area likely resulted from a complex array of push-and-pull factors that brought specific groups, their ritual practices, and technologies into new social landscapes just before the depopulation of the greater San Juan River drainage at the end of the thirteenth century AD.

Unlike the large community centers in the east, no large, aggregated pueblos were built in Cedar Mesa at the scale of Sand Canyon or Goodman Point Pueblos, though several medium-to-large-sized canyon-head sites (by Cedar Mesa standards) with tower complexes (i.e., 42SA1725 and 42SA1721/1763) around permanent springs may have functioned in similar ways. These sites, along with at least ten other likely contemporaneous sites with towers on the eastern escarpment of Cedar Mesa (in Comb and Butler Washes) (Bredthauer 2010, fig. 4.1), represent the westernmost extent of the Hovenweep-style tower complex in the region. Alison Bredthauer (2010, 110, 211) argues that the presence of Hovenweep-style towers and their placements at the heads and rims of canyons along with their pottery indicate that the occupants of these sites had strong social and ideological ties to the central Mesa Verde area.

When groups left the area throughout the AD 1200s, they migrated into increasingly aggregated communities in the central Mesa Verde region in the east, or to the Tsegi Canyon or Canyon de Chelly areas to the south (figure 18.1). Prior research by Crow Canyon and others have provided explanatory models for push-pull factors influencing migrations. These include discussions of warfare, disease and health, human impact on the environment, and environmental change (Dean 2010; Kuckelman 2010a, 193; Kuckelman et al. 2000; Lightfoot and Kuckelman 2001; Varien 2010; Wright 2010), perhaps even impacted by worldwide changes from catastrophic volcanic eruptions (Windes 2019). Social strife—as well as changes in social structure, settlement organization, and religious practices—may have provided the impetus to leave broad areas of the larger region (Glowacki 2010, 2011, 2015).

Summary

A larger population remained in the Cedar Mesa area in the late Pueblo III period than had previously been proposed. Our data indicate a population of at least several hundred people, if not over 1,000 or more, in the area during the AD 1260s. While relatively small when compared to the larger sites in other areas, these populations formed a dispersed community that shared important connections that were expressed through settlement locations, architecture, building murals, and rock art. New communities were built near access to permanent springs and in precarious settings. Placement of sites in defensible settings that contained large shield imagery beginning in the mid-to-late AD 1240s and 1250s indicates the potential that warfare and intravillage strife were pressing issues for the groups who remained in the area. The impetus for shifting settlements to canyon-head settings in the early-to-mid AD 1200s may have begun in response to increased warfare and the threat of violence, either between local and outside forces or between local canyon communities. Groups moved away to avoid these conditions, and the remaining population took refuge in precarious places. Given contemporaneity, we propose that this social strife was related to similar types of increased violence and conflict that transpired at sites to the east, including Castle Rock and Sand Canyon Pueblos in the central Mesa Verde area (Kuckelman 2010a, 193, 2010b; Kuckelman et al. 2000; Kuckelman, chapter 19 in this volume) and in the middle San Juan region at Salmon Pueblo (Akins 2008, 164).

While some of the groups from Cedar Mesa may have left the region entirely, most likely moved east or southeast to join groups living in the central Mesa Verde, even the middle San Juan (Glowacki 2015), and possibly even the San Juan Basin areas. Some groups, however, may have moved out of the greater Cedar Mesa area to the south and west to join Kayenta region communities, in the Tsegi Canyon area and beyond, with whom they already had historic ties as evidenced by the use of shared architectural traditions including jacal architecture and entryboxes (Dean 1969; Geib 2011). Evidence of migrants from the Cedar Mesa area may also include the use of pilasters in kivas in Tsegi Canyon (Dean 1967, 132), the appearance of Mesa Verde–style mug technology at Awat’ovi in the Hopi region (Smith 1971, 198, fig. 153), and the use of tchamahias made from Brushy Basin chert sourced to the greater Cedar Mesa area (Arakawa et al., chapter 15 in this volume; Wenker 1999).

Conclusions

In this chapter we have provided new and unequivocal evidence for late construction activities in the canyons of Cedar Mesa during AD 1250–1270 period at a larger scale than previously suggested in prior studies (Matson, Lipe, and Curewitz 2015; Matson, Lipe, and Haase 1988; Varien 2010). These samples come primarily from sites with defensive attributes including difficult-to-access locations along cliff ledges and around, and on top of, pinnacle outcrops. Some sites also exhibit various architectural barriers, inhibiting direct access to parts of the site. We have documented in detail the large canyon sites within several canyon systems across the greater Cedar Mesa area and the southern areas of the Manti–La Sal National Forest and have begun to refine the late chronology at the end of the occupation of this long-lived cultural landscape (see Matson, Lipe, and Curewitz 2015; Matson, Lipe, and Haase 1988). The AD 1200s was a period of great change for ancestral Pueblo people across the northern San Juan region, with much warfare, out-migration to the east and south, and final cessation of habitation over much of the region by AD 1300 (Ahlstrom et al. 1995; Duff and Wilshusen 2000; Glowacki 2015; Varien 2010). These findings are due in large part to the contributions of researchers and associates associated with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, especially William Lipe, R. G. Matson, Mark Varien, and Steve Nash. We hope to continue this tradition by building on existing datasets and augmenting these data with new research.

The tree-ring dates presented in this chapter add to the enormous body of dendrochronological data for the northern Southwest. While our contribution is relatively small in terms of raw numbers of new dates, these data come from a critical area within the larger region, one distinguished by some of the best preservation and some of the most remarkable examples of ancestral Pueblo material culture. As such, these data provide valuable new insights into the greater Cedar Mesa area and the larger region. Just as important, our contribution illustrates that archaeologists should not limit their perspectives on the possibilities of tree-ring research due to “an embarrassment of riches,” as Stephen Nash and Christina Rogers (2014) posit. Instead, we should continue to refine existing tree-ring chronologies and cultural histories in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of regional depopulation processes at the end of the thirteenth century.

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