http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_national_park/co/his_mes.htm

Tools: The Anasazi were a stone-age people, without metal of any kind. They skillfully shaped stone, bone, and wood into a variety of tools for grinding, cutting, pounding, chopping, perforating, scraping, polishing and weaving.

http://www.cr.nps.gov/worldheritage/chachist.htm

The Chaco Anasazi were skilled masons. Working without metal tools or any formal mathematics, they put up vast communal buildings that still compel admiration.

http://www.abqjournal.com/venue/travel/heritage_chaco.htm

Dr. Gregory Schaaf, a scholar in Indian history, wrote: "The architectural engineering and artistic skills of these prehistoric builders is enhanced by the realization that they worked without metal tools or precision instruments."

http://www.answers.com/topic/ancient-pueblo-peoples

Because of the cultural continuity from the Basket Makers to the Pueblos, they are jointly referred to by archaeologists as the Anasazi culture.

http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/Introduction/glossary.htm

Traditionally, the Pueblo people were labeled by the Spanish as pueblo (stone masonry town dwellers) in contrast to rancheria (brush/mud camp dwellers). As a cultural group they have survived with clearly unbroken continuity into the present from at least as long ago as two millenia.

http://fhss.byu.edu/anthro/mopc/PAGES/Exhibitions/Earth/Basketmaker.html

Many aspects of Basketmaker culture persisted for hundreds of years and became part of the defining characteristics of the Anasazi and their modern descendants, the Puebloans of the American Southwest. The oral histories of the modern Pueblos preserve a rich heritage, and archaeological research has enabled some modern Puebloan groups to expand their knowledge even further into the distant past.

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nagpra/fed_notices/nagpradir/nic0935.html

The habitation sites were occupied at various times during the Basketmaker III, Pueblo II and Pueblo III periods, approximately A.D. 550-1250, with a temporary abandonment during the Pueblo I period, approximately A.D. 750-900. Based on the general continuity in the material culture and the architecture of these sites, it appears that the community that lived in this area had long-standing ties to the region and returned to sites even after migrations away from the locale that lasted more than one hundred years.

http://www.moabhappenings.com/Archives/hiking0512NotAnasazi.htm

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/northamerica/culture/s.w.uscultures/pueblo.html

The Anasazi or ancient Puebloans were most certainly the ancestors of the Modern Pueblo people. The lines of descent, in general terms, are beyond debate in the field of American archaeology. Almost any Pueblo archaeology reference that discusses the linkage between past and present groups will cover this topic. You might look at the discussion in my book: The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon, 2004, published by Greenwood Press.

Now, the specific ancestries of individual Puebloan groups and pueblos (towns) are very complicated. We cannot say, with certainty, that the people from Chaco Canyon, for example, went on to become the builders of one or two or three specific pueblo towns on the Rio Grande or among the Western Pueblo. Chaco seems to have been a gathering point for multiple members of various Pueblo ethnic and biosocial groups.

Tracing the ancestry of various modern Pueblo towns is a current issue of interest for many Southwestern archaeologists. I think we'll see some breakthroughs in the not-to-distant future.

best, Paul Reed

Paul F. Reed
Chaco Scholar—Preservation Archaeologist
Center for Desert Archaeology
Salmon Ruins Museum
P.O. Box 125
Bloomfield, NM 87413
505-632-0657
505-632-1707 (fax)
preed@cdarc.org

What Happened to the Basketmaker People?

The transition from the Basketmaker to the Pueblo Anasazi is somewhat of a puzzle. Did the Basketmaker people gradually become the Pueblo Anasazi? Or, did they abandon the region or even become extinct?

Archaeologists during the early part of the 20th century speculated that the Basketmaker people were genetically and culturally distinct from the later Puebloan people. This theory was founded primarily on osteological evidence—researchers studying skeletal remains of Basketmaker and the Pueblo Anasazi found a lack of cranial deformation in the Basketmaker people and its definite presence in the Pueblo Anasazi. Proponents of this theory suggested a population replacement of the Basketmaker with a new race, possibly from the south.

Today, the most widely accepted theory holds that the Basketmaker evolved into the later Pueblo cultures. Many scholars now believe that the Basketmaker and the Pueblo Anasazi are, in essence, the same culture, and together constitute ancestral Puebloan people whose descendants live in the modern day Pueblos of the Southwest. Additional osteology research suggested that the cranial differences first held to be biological evidence of genetic differences between the groups was entirely the result of a cultural practice, placing babies on hard cradle boards that slowly deformed their heads as they grew.

The most compelling evidence for the theory of cultural continuity is the material culture itself, which suggests a continuation of peoples. Pottery making and subsistence strategies that began in the Basketmaker period persist and become more developed in the Pueblo periods. Basket and sandal-making continue as well, although techniques do evolve and there seems to be a lessened emphasis on the textile crafts in later Puebloan times.

Recent regional studies of human skeletal material from Native American populations throughout the Southwest and new advanced DNA research techniques have once again raised the possibility that there may be some genetic differences between the two groups. This, together with linguistic data, suggest that the history of Puebloan people may be much more complex than first thought, and that immigration and mixing of various prehistoric groups probably took place over the very long course of prehistory. It is entirely possible that both theories are correct: as we know from history and recent experience, populations can absorb new genetic material and still maintain cultural cohesiveness; and cultural assimilation can render underlying genetics inconsequential. It is part of the human phenomenon that primarily culture, rather than genetics, defines who we are as people.