Basketmaker III: pottery, beans and the bow on the Colorado Plateau

In the Pecos Classification of Ancestral Puebloan history this stage is called Basketmaker III, Post-Basketmaker or ‘Modified Basketmaker’. People still lived in pit-houses, but larger and deeper than before, divided into areas, with a central hearth, an entrance vestibule and walls lined with stone slabs; a log frame carried a roof of woven reeds, grass and mud with an opening in the centre for smoke and entry. Most were built in the open on mesa tops, some with an attached storeroom, and food was kept in stone-lined storage pits.

Several innovations changed everyday life. The bow and arrow largely replaced the spear and the atlatl, or spear-thrower. Plain grey pottery, better than baskets for cooking and carrying water, came into use, and with it beans, which had arrived through trade from Mesoamerica and could be eaten after slow boiling in pots; wild amaranth and pinyon nuts were also staples. Turkeys were raised for their feathers, woven into blankets and robes, and for food. The Basketmakers went on weaving fine baskets, bags, yucca sandals and cradleboards.

In Chaco Canyon more than 200 Basketmaker sites of about 450–700 are known, usually clusters of one to twenty pit-houses. Shabik’eschee, the type site of the period (about 550–700), had 18 pit-houses for an estimated 77 people, more than 50 storage pits and a large pit-house for ceremonies, probably an early great kiva. Near Pleasant View in Colorado at least eleven settlements of 600–700 were enclosed by stockades, probably for defence. The dates are archaeological and approximate; around 750 the Pueblo I period began.