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Ancient American
Question | Answer |
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Anasazi(1) | Culture that exsited fom about 1200 BC to 1300 AD in the four corners area of SW U.S. Best known for the ruins of their monumental cliff dwellings at places like Mesa Verde, which they abandoned at the end of the 13th century |
Anasazi (2) | Navaho (more correctly, "Dine" or "Dineh") word which, depending on the pronunsiation, means either "enemy ancestors" or "ancient people who are not us." |
Mesa Verde | [Spanish for "Green PLateau"] 1. National park in southwestern Colorado, sit of many Anasazi cliff dwellings. 2. The Anasazi region around Mesa Verde. San Juan Region |
Pueblo Culture | [Spanish for "town"]Indian village of the American southwest. |
Chaco canyon | Extensive Ancient Puebloan culture (circa 800 AD) in NW New Mexico; Known for massive stone buildings (Great Houses) of multiple stories containing hundreds of rooms, extensive roads and water control systems. |
Aztec Ruins | Anasazi village in New Mexico with the largest reconstructed ceremonial kiva |
Bandelier | National monument containing a numb er of ancestral pueblo homes, multi-story dwellings, kivas (cerimonial structures), rock paintings and petroglyphs. Some of the dwellings were rock structures built on the canyon floor |
Tuzigoot | ancient hilltop agricultural pueblo in AZ that consisted of 110 one, two and three-story structures. |
Hopi | Believed to be descended from the ancient Puebloan cultures who cunstructed large apartment-house complexes in NE Arizona and NW New Mexico along the Mogollon Rim, from 1100-1300 AD, when they abandoned their large villages |
zuni | Like the Hopi, descendants of the Anasazi. |
Navajo | aka "Dene" people were hunter-gatherers until they adopted Pueblo life. Known for raising sheep, blanket weaving, and pottery. The Navajo Reservation in AZ id yhr largest in USA. |
Taos | an ancient pueblo belonging to a Taos (Northern Tiwa) speaking Native American tribe of Pueblo people. Still inhabitated, it is approximately 100 years old and lies about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the modern city of Taos, New Mexico |
Acoma | Known as "Sky City", is a Native American Pueblo built on top of a 367 foot sandstone mesa in New Mexico. (1100 AD) It is one of the oldest continuously inhabitated communities within the USA. Known for distinctive orange, white, and black pottery. |
Santa Clara | The pueblo is on the Rio Grande, between Ohkay Owingeh (formerly San Juan Pueblo) to the north and San Ildefonso Pueblo to the south. Santa Clara Pueblo is famous for producing hand-crafted pottery, specifically blackware and redware with deep engravings. |
Kiva (Great Kiva) | 1. A square, above ground room used by modern day Hopi for religious and spiritual ceremonies. 2. A subterranean room - usually round, generally believed to have been used by Anasazi men for religious and ceremonial purposes. |
Foot drums | rectangular hardwood boards of different thicknesses or streched animal hides laid across a rectangular kiva pit that make a deep resonating sound when danced upon. |
Pictographs | Pictures or picture-like symbols that reperesent and idea or tell a story. Pictographs can be found in the works of many ancient cultures on papyrus or wood, on cloth, on pottery and jewelry, painted on walls. |
Pottery | Pueblo culture is known for the many styles of pottery from across the Plateau region. Each pueblo has its own distinctive style. |
Yucca plant | Menber of the agave family with stiff green sword-like leaces and white flowers on a tall stalk. Pueblo peoples used the roots and flowers for food, tips for needles, fibers for weaving baskets, sandles and rope, sap (aloe vera) for medicine |
Kachinas | 1. Benevolent spiritual intermediaries between certain Southwestern peoples and the gods. Kachinas bring good health, fertility, rain. abundance and other blessings. 2. (Modern days) Dolls or images of the supernatural beings. |
weaving | Pueblo peoples wove decorative baskets and sandles from the fibers of the yucca plant. They wove colorful, intricate blankets from sheep's wool. Dyed with natural plant and rock materials. |
Plateau | is an elevated area of land with a flat top and sides that are usually steep cliffs. It takes its name from its characteristic table-top shape. |
Monument Valley | (Navajo: Tse Bii ndzisgaii, meaning valley of the rocks) is a region of Colorado Plateau (AZ & UT) characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft (300 m) above the valley floor. |
Cliff dwellers | Native Americans of the Anasazi culture who were builders of the ancient cliff dwellings found in the canyons, under cliff overhangs and on the mesas of the U.S. Southwest |
Montezuma Castle | well-preserved cliff dwellings. They were built and used by the PreCoumbian Sinagua people, northern cousins of the Hohokam, [3] around 700 AD. Several Hopi clans trace their roots to immigrants from the Montezuma Castle/ Beaver Creek area. |
Hogan | the primary traditional round home of the Navajo people; made of wooden poles covered with a layer of mud. Door faces east to greet the sun |
Wikiup | a temporary domed room dwelling, usually constructed of branches and reeds used by certain Southwest Native American tribes to provide shade and ventilation. |
Maize | early form of corn. |
flint | a heard, sedimentary crystalline form of the mineral quartz, can be "flaked" with a harder stone to make arrowheads, spear points, etc. |
drought | an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation (rain or snow) |
conquistadors | Spanish soldiers who conquered Mexico and the American Southwest and established a network of settlements (16th - 18th century AD) Forced Indians to convert to Christianity. |
Pueblo Revolt | In 1680, after years of Spanish religious persecution and brutality, New Mexico and Arizona Pueblos coordinated and attack on the Spanish and drove them back to mexico.12 years later, Captain General Diego de Vargas led a bloodless reconquest. |
Turquoise | and opaque, blue-to-green mineral prized by the Navajo and other Pueblo peoples for making jewelry. |
mano | Spanish for hand. Grinding stone. A hand-held stone used to grind grain, nuts, and seeds on the larger metate |
metate | A flat or slightly concave stone base on which grain, nuts, and seeds were ground using the smaller mano. |
Taos Pueblo | The oldest, continually inhabited pueblo in America, near the upper Rio Grande canyon(NM). |
Mogollon | [Spanish for "hanger-on" or "sponger"] A seperate culture which coexisted and had commerce with the Anasazi. These ancient farmers lived in what is njow Southern Arizona-New Mexico. Named for the Mogollon Plateau |
Hohokam | A native American culture flourishing from about the 3rd century B.C. to the mid-15th century A.D. in South -central Arizona, noted for the constrution of and extensive system of irrigation canals. |
Colorado Plateau | Roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwstern US. 90% of the area is drained by the Colorado River. Largly made up of deserts, with scattered areas of a forests. The Grand Canyon is in SW corner. |
Foot Holds/ Hand holds | holes carved into the sheer rock face of cliffs so Pueblo people could climb up or down from cliff dwellings. also made defense of their villages easier. |
Nomadic | constatly moving; never settling in one place; following food supplies and moving with the seasons. |
sedentary | stationary; settled in one place; opposite of nomadic |
horticulture | cultivating plants and seeds for food. |
puelo diet | Pueblo diet corn, beans, squash, pinon nuts, fish, deer, rabbit, antelope, birds |
Fremont culture | the Fremont lived a lifestyle that revolved largely around hunting and gathering and corn horticulture. A pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah. |
Marauders | Nomadic tribes who raided and plundered agricultural pueblos |
Apache | One of the nomadic, hunter-gatherer, marauding tribes of the Southwest plateau region. Speak Athabaskan. |
Granary | Storage room for grain made of adobe mud bricks, stone and/or wood frames. Usually in high cliff locations to protect animals and raiding tribes. |
Kayenta | Regional group of the Anasazi, named for the region around Kayenta in northeastern Arizona. Monument Valley. The Kayenta Anasazi are ancestors of Hopi, who prefer to call the area "Wunuqa." |
Keresan | One of the languages of the Anasazi and descendants, including the people of Acoma, Cochiti, Laguna, Santa Ana, Santa Domingo, San Felipe and Zia Pueblos in New Mexico. |
Kokopelli | ["Kachina hump," probably Hopi/Zuni origin]A well-known mythological hump-backed flute player in most Southwestern Pueblo Cultures. Among other things, this spiritual figure represents fertility and rain. |
Moqui\Moki | A Hopi word meaning "the dead" which is often used to identify their ancestors. Preferred to the Dine Navajo word, "Anasazi." |
petroglyph | Rock carving or rock art made by "pecking" the surface with another rock. Ex. "Newspaper Rock" in Holbrook, Arizona |
pinon | Spanish for "pine nut."Small pine tree with large edible nuts. |
pithouse | A house built substancially underground. Used by many early cultures, including the Anasazi. Consisted of a pit, often lined with rocks, and a roof of branches, mud, etc., held up by verticle timbers, usually four |
potsherd | Fragment of broken pottery. Also "shard" |
Pueblo Bonito | Spanish for "pretty village." The most famous Great House at Chaco Canyon. |
Puebloan | 1. Modern Native American Indian peoples, including those living at Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Laguna, Jemez, and Zia pueblos and the 14 Rio Grande pueblos. 2. Anasazi ancestors of the modern Puebloans. |
sipapu | 1. The "navel" of the Earth from which distant Puebloan ancestors are said to have emerged as they entered the present world. 2. The small hole or indentation in the floor of a kiva which symbolizes the people's Earthly origin. |
spindle whorl | In hand spinning, the spindle is a rounded wooden rod for twisting cotton fibers into thread. The whorl is a sort of flywheel that regulates the speed of the spinning wheel. |
teosinte | Tall grass-like native of Mexico with tassel and small, hard ears. Believed to be ancestor of corn. |
tree-ring dating | Scientific technique of comparing a cut timber to a master calendar of tree-ring growth from about 6,700 B.C. to the present. Based on the fact that a tree ring grows each year and the rings are narrower in dry years and wider in wet years. |
stone mortar and pestle | Hollowed stone bowl and mashing tool used to grind maize, nuts, berries, and pigments. |
Colorado River | 1,450 mile long river that flows southwest from the Continental Divide to the Gulf of California. It's powerful waters formed the Grand Canyon over 9 million years. |
Rio Grande River | 1,896 miles long and flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Forms U.S. southern border with Mexico. |
Pueblo culture music | Foot drums, tamborines, reed flute, turtle shell rattles used to create connections to the spirit world and reflect sounds of the natural landscape |