Kivas

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A sipapu is a small hole in the floor that symbolizes the opening in the ceiling of the Third World through which the people emerged into the present Fourth World, according to Hopi legend. • The kivas at Mesa Verde were underground chambers that may be compared to churches of later times. Based upon modern Pueblo practice, Ancestral Puebloans may have used these rooms to conduct healing rites or to pray for rain, luck in hunting, or good crops. ( Ancient Puebloan churches. ) • • However, the kachina belief system appears to have emerged in the Southwest at approximately AD 1250, while kiva like structures occurred much earlier. This suggests that the room's older functions may have been changed or adapted to suit the new religious practice. • • Some kivas are just the last manifestation of the long tradition of pit houses. • (http://homepage.mac.com/ritz4/Interim...) • • From about A.D. 500, as pithouse design and construction evolved, the shallow pits grew deeper — more like three to five feet deep. Often, the sides of the pit were plastered with clay or lined with stone — either large slabs wedged upright in the soil or courses of smaller stones laid around the inside perimeter. Generally, pithouses were round, and between nine and twenty-five feet in diameter. Later, around A.D. 700, many new pithouses were square, rectangular or shaped like the letter D. • • Usually, four posts were positioned upright in the pit, joined at the top by four horizontal beams and crossed with ceiling joists. The outer skin of the pithouse was made of branches, brush and grass or a matting of tree bark. Construction was completed with a layer of mud on the outside of the roof and walls for protection from the weather. Inside was a central fireplace, used for heating and cooking. Side vents and a hole in the roof provided fresh air and evacuated smoke. • • Today, there are almost no remaining pithouses in the open. The elements have obliterated them. Many of the existing examples have been discovered through excavation. There are pithouse reproductions at places like Mesa Verde and in the Museum at the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. • (http://www.cliffdwellingsmuseum.com/a...) • • (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_Ver...) • • • Ancient Pueblo People or Ancestral Puebloans were an ancient Native American culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the United States, comprising southern Utah, northern Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and a lesser section of Colorado. (The Navajo Nation covers three of the four state corners) • • The cultural group has often been referred to in archaeology as the Anasazi, although the term is not preferred by the modern Puebloan peoples. The word Anasazi is Navajo for Ancient Ones or Ancient Enemy . • • Archaeologists still debate when this distinct culture emerged, but the current consensus, based on terminology defined by the Pecos Classification, suggests their emergence around 1200 BC. Beginning with the earliest explorations and excavations, researchers have believed that the Ancient Puebloans are ancestors of the modern Pueblo peoples. • • For unknown ages they were led by war chiefs guided by the Spirits across North America. They settled first in the Ancient Pueblo areas for a few hundred years, then migrated to their current location. • • It is not entirely clear why the Ancestral Puebloans migrated from their established homes in the 12th and 13th centuries. Factors examined and discussed include global or regional climate change (cf. Little Ice Age), prolonged periods of drought, cyclical periods of topsoil erosion, environmental degradation, de-forestation, hostility from new arrivals, religious or cultural change, and even influence from Mesoamerican cultures. Many of these possibilities are supported by archaeological evidence. • (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_...)

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