Late Basketmaker II era

Archaeologists call these people Basketmakers after the many baskets found at their sites; together with the later Pueblo stages they make up the Pecos Classification of Ancestral Puebloan history. In the Early Basketmaker II era (from about 1500 BC — the Russian article says 1200 BC — to about AD 50) semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers began to grow maize and squash. In the late era, about AD 50–500, people lived in permanent dwellings, crude pit-houses of brush, logs and earth, with simple storage pits for the harvest. Groups became increasingly linked into larger communities, with emerging religious and decision-making structures.

The Basketmakers hunted with spears and the atlatl, or spear-thrower, and wore sandals woven of yucca fibre; fired pottery reached them only towards the end of the period. The dates are archaeological and approximate. The next stage, Basketmaker III (about 500–750), brought the bow and arrow and deeper pit-houses and led on to the Pueblo villages.