Mesa Verde National Park, Far View Community, Mancos, Colorado

There are a few different sections to Mesa Verde; we took two days to tour them. The first section was Chapin Mesa, which I just highlighted. The Far View Community is in also on Chapin Mesa. The next section will be Wetherill Mesa.

Far View Community is more than 750 years old. In 1050 AD, this community would have been filled with the smell of juniper smoke and sounds of everyday life. It was one of the most densely populated regions of the Mesa Verde. In the mid-1100s, there may have been at least 35 occupied villages and surrounding farm and garden plots within a half-square-mile area, including the sites in this area.

We are standing in front of the Far View House. This was the largest house in the community, with at least 40 rooms on the ground floor and about 30 rooms on the second floor. This was the Great House, a central structure at the heart of the village. 

Far View House

Archeologists have identified many large, multi-storied pueblos similar to Far View House throughout the region. Some of them are called "Great Houses." Great Houses are massive buildings with large rooms built around one or more enclosed kivas. Often the doorways aligned and a special type of masonry was used. There is sometimes a great kiva nearby. Unlike most residential pueblos or the later cliff dwellings, where people often added individual rooms as they needed them, Great Houses seem to have been built following a plan. Like Far View House, they usually occupy a prominent place on the landscape.

Pipe Shrine House

The ancient farmers at Far View lived in an agricultural region which extended throughout the four corners area, wherever dryland agriculture was possible. Although separated by geography and distance, the people were connected through trade and a shared farming lifestyle.

 

Like most of the homes and villages in the Far View Community, Coyote Village was constructed long before Mesa Verde's famous cliff dwellings. Starting before AD 975, Coyote Village was built, occupied and abandoned, rebuilt, and reoccupied several times. Each time the people returned, they reused some of the stones and timbers, adding to or remodeling rooms their ancestors had built. 

Some of the kivas in Coyote Village were built with a recess that gives them a "keyhole" shape. Others do not. "Keyhole" kivas are common in Mesa Verde sites, and may indicate a local style that people came to prefer in the AD 1200s. One of the kivas here was connected to the tower by an underground tunnel.

Manos and metates are grinding stones used for grinding corn and other seeds. They were often placed in mealing bins when they were being used, probably to help contain the freshly ground meal. You can see mealing bins in the following picture.

This picture shows the Coyote House from an aerial viewpoint and how the different kivas are placed.

The Far View Community also used a reservoir to house water. It was built in two phases beginning about AD 900. It has been a source of awe and study since it was first described as a reservoir by Swedish scientist Gustav Nordenskiold in 1891. Several recent research projects have confirmed that it did collect water, at least at times.

Its construction would have required an enormous investment of time and energy: it's about 90 feet in interior diameter and has constructed embankments on the south and east sides, steps on the exterior, and a ramp on the interior. Clearly not a home, this set of semi-circular walls and mounds of earth was probably built as a community project for the collection of water.

The Ancestral Pueblo people were sophisticated builders using the simplest of technology. Without worked metal, they used stone, wood, bone, and leather to make digging tools, axes, knives, and small tools for fine work. Without beasts of burden or wheeled vehicles, they carried tons of stone, soil and water by hand to built elaborate multi-story buildings. With simple surveying tools, they often aligned structures with the cardinal directions, local landmarks, and celestial events.

There is plentiful evidence that water pooled in the central low spot for centuries. Of the potsherds found in excavations here, about 86% are from decorated black-on-white ollas, which were used as water and food storage jars.