History Colorado

Field Museum

People from all over the world study the Mesa Verde in the South West region because these archaeological sites hold rich data. The arid climate, large number of sites, and well-preserved wood in those sites have made it possible to develop a more complete chronology of this region than anywhere else in the world.  Trees produce growth rings of different sizes every year that reveal changes in precipitation.  Scientists use tree rings to pinpoint construction dates of buildings.

Tree Rings Can Tell Time

Pueblo people have been making pottery in the Southwest United States for hundreds of years. We can learn a lot from the traditions and knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation. Explore how similar forms, from different times and cultures, can function in the same way. Watch these video clips of potter Dolly Naranjo Neikrug to learn how natural materials are used for making pottery over time.

Ways of Knowing From Ancestors, Pottery Example  

Evidence in the Unwritten 	

Basketry formed an essential element of ancestral Pueblo culture in southwestern Colorado. Baskets continued to be used for a wide variety of purposes even after the introduction of pottery into the area. Baskets weigh much less and thus easier to transport than pottery vessels, and, unlike pottery, they didn’t break when dropped.  Watch these videos to learn about how Pueblo people today still make things from yucca using both traditional and modern methods.

Ways of Knowing From Ancestors, Yucca Example

Overview

In this activity, learn about five disciplinary lenses and how they can be applied to explore the question of how form relates to function in the objects you observe throughout this kit. 

Click on the Object Information and use the links below in Additional Resources research and find answers to these disciplinary questions! 

Applying Disciplinary Lenses to Objects 

Learn about how scientists ask questions to examine artifacts to learn more about the past.   

Ask an Artifact	

To understand what life was like in the past, we must look at various sources of information to discover clues and think critically about what they can tell us. To understand our oldest stories, such as ancient cultures, we rely on the incomplete records we find through archaeology to learn about populations of the past. 

Practice and compare the many lenses we can use to learn about the past while exploring the form, function, continuity and change of objects from across history.


Lesson Plan: The Dirt on Ancestral Puebloan Plaster and Paint

Lesson Plan: Pottery of the Ancestral Pueblo

Video:Rocky Mountain PBS Colorado Experience: Living West, Water

Colorado Encyclopedia Article on Mesa Verde National Park Colorado 

Encyclopedia Article Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners Region

Understanding the Past

Notice the tiny rings on the tree stump. Each ring represents approximately one year of growth. 

How many years did this tree live before being cut down? 

Scientists make a timeline of the Mesa Verde region by matching and overlapping cores from living piñon and juniper trees with rings from dead trees of the same species. Once a master timeline or chronology is created, scientists can use it to date the wood from archaeological sites giving them an approximate date for the site or artifact.

This structure style is common to the Southwestern United States. This photo was taken in Southern Colorado or Northern New Mexico. Note the wood beams common in ancestral Puebloan structures and common to adobe structures today.

Photograph of adobe structure with wood log beams.  This structure style is common to the Southwestern United States.  This photo was taken in Southern Colorado or Northern New Mexico.

Negative, Adobe structure photo

Scientists match cores from beams in ancient buildings with a master timeline. Sometimes Ancestral Pueblo people reused wood from old buildings, so researchers collect cores from several beams in a home or kiva to make sure they’re dating it accurately.

How do you think researchers know that the wood was reused? 

3 Tree Ring Cores from southwest Colorado.  Important for dendrochronology

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Understanding the Past

Tree Rings Can Tell Time

Background Knowledge

Rings