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cliff dwellers, Native Americans of the Anasazi culture who were builders of the ancient cliff dwellings found in the canyons and on the mesas of the U.S. Southwest, principally on the tributaries of the Rio Grande and the Colorado River in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. It was once thought that these ruins were the work of an extinct aboriginal people, but it has been established that they were built (11th-14th cent.) by the ancestors of the present Pueblo. The dwellings were large communal habitations built on ledges in the canyon walls and on the flat tops of the mesas. Access to the cliffs was very difficult and thus highly defensible against nomadic predatory tribes such as the Navajo. The cliff dwellers were sedentary agriculturists who planted crops in the river valleys below their high-perched houses. They were experts at irrigating the fields. Their lives were organized on a communal pattern, and the many kivas (see kiva) show that their religious ceremonies were like those of the Pueblo today. Many of the dwellings are now in national parks. Some of the better-known ones are those of the Mesa Verde National Park, in Colorado, where there are more than 300 dwellings; Canyons of the Ancients and Yucca House national monuments, also in Colorado; Hovenweep National Monument, in Utah; Bandelier and Gila Cliff Dwellings national monuments, in New Mexico; and Canyon de Chelly, Casa Grande Ruins, Montezuma Castle, and Wupatki national monuments, in Arizona.

See W. Current, Pueblo Architecture of the Southwest (1971).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument: see National Parks and Monuments (table).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

cliff dwelling

Prehistoric, usually multistoried house of the ancestors of present-day Pueblo Indians, built from circa 1000 along the sides or under the overhangs of cliffs. The use of hand-hewn stone building blocks and adobe mortar in these communal dwellings was unexcelled even in later times. Rooms on upper levels could be entered either by doorways from adjoining rooms or by ladders through holes in the ceilings; ground-floor rooms could be entered only through the ceiling. It is thought that the cliff dwellings were built as a defense against invading Navajo and Apache tribes. They were deserted by the inhabitants around the end of the 13th century. Many ruins remain, including notable ones at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Mesa Verde National Park, and Montezuma Castle National Monument.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

National preserve, southwestern New Mexico, U.S. Located in the Gila National Forest near the headwaters of the Gila River, it contains groups of small but well-preserved Pueblo Indian dwellings in natural cavities of an overhanging cliff 150 ft (45 m) high. The dwellings were inhabited circa AD 100–1300. Established in 1907, the monument occupies 533 acres (216 hectares).

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.