Moderator
Question 1: Why do you believe these specific societies (Anasazi etc.) collapsed? What about this location (southwestern U.S.) added to this?
- The southwest is a particularly difficult area to inhabit. The land tends to be dry and what life/species it does support are limited. Mainly due to the little rainfall that occurs, not many organisms can survive in desert or desert-adjacent areas. This includes humans, as little drinkable water, few edible plants, difficulty with agriculture, and few sources of meat make for a difficult life.
- “Despite these varying proximate causes of abandonments, all were ultimately due to the same fundamental challenge: people living in fragile and difficult environments, adopting solutions that were brilliantly successful and understandable “in the short run,” but that failed or else created fatal problems in the long run, when people became confronted with external environmental changes or human-caused environmental changes that societies without written histories and without archaeologists could not have anticipated” (131).
Question 2: How might this location have been beneficial to these societies as compared to others?
- While environmental factors may not have been on the Anasazi’s (or other society’s) side, there were some perks of living in the southwest. One upside is that there was less fight over land in this area. Due to lack of resources, not many other groups of people desired the same land. This meant not only were there fewer disputes between native peoples in this are as compared to the northeast, but also fewer with those from expanding European societies.
Question 3: Why did some of these societies resort to cannibalism? Is cannibalism justified for these people?
- Particularly in southwestern U.S. agriculture is difficult (116). Soil doesn’t support many plant species and rainfall is limited. Due to this food sources are limited both from plants and the animals that would feed on those plants. When food is scarce, societies must adapt, and there is evidence of cannibalism. This may have been a significant part of the Anasazi people’s diet, without which the society may have collapsed much sooner. However, there were strategies to make agriculture easier, such as irrigation (117-118). Perhaps cannibalism was a good source of meat and protein, but was it necessary?
- As the societies collapsed even fewer food sources were available, here evidence of cannibalism is especially strong (129). In this desperate situation could it be justified?
Question 4: How were these societies advanced? What technologies and knowledge did they possess that was particularly interesting or innovative? Or what made these societies not advanced compared to others around the same time?
- “…Anasazi stone houses, dams, and irrigation systems…” (116) The Anasazi and other societies living in the southwestern U.S. had to adapt to their environment. It is believed that the native people of this area originated from further south (Mexico) and were hunter gatherers. I it is believed that crops such as corn, squash, and beans came to the U.S. with them. In order to support these crops they established irrigation systems, necessary for agriculture in this area. There were three alternative types of agriculture established by societies in the southwest, such as the Hohokam, to successfully grow crops in this difficult location. The first strategy involved planting crops on high elevations where rainfall was more common. The second solution was to plant crops where ground water was close to the surface and plant roots could reach it on their own. The third approach to agriculture consisted of collecting water runoff and using irrigation systems to direct it to the crop fields (118).
Question 5: Has history (public education/general knowledge) been accurate towards these societies? What was your initial understanding of these societies before reading the chapter? What about now? Do you think they have been portrayed fairly? Why?
- “Nevertheless, many or most European and American anthropologists, brought up to regard cannibalism with horror in their own societies, are also horrified at the thought of it being practiced by peoples that they admire and study, and so they deny its occurrence and consider claims of it as racist slander” (128). Many history books and commonly taught historical events are inaccurate. There is a saying “the winners write the history books” that I think is important to consider. Oftentimes, especially with minorities, history is fairly one-sided and depicts individuals or entire societies as something that they are not. Whether making them out to be vicious cannibals or intelligent innovators, for example, public education usually does not provide the whole story.
Character 1: Customs Post Receiving Manager
Character Description
My character was an import receiving manager for the royal court, in the Anasazi capital city in Chaco Canyon. As with all with the privilege of living a life of luxury in the dependent capital, he is related to either royalty or clergy, but with the relatively low population levels of Anasazi society, even the most elite must contribute in order to fill all the roles needed to keep the gears of such a complex system turning.
Essay
Ever since I began my apprenticeship at 12 years old, I’ve coordinated imports and exports to the capital city from the villages beyond the canyon walls. I’ve lived in my own pueblo with my family at the entrance to the pass, as it’s impractical to travel back and forth to the palace every day. Still, I live in luxury with servants tending to my every need. Throughout my teenage years, imports grew, the canyon sent corn outward to the empire, and the city prospered. Farm fields sprawled up and down every mountain. But then as I entered my 20s, I noted a trend, as was part of my job: housing and fortifications occupied more land in the canyon, the farm fields received less water to produce less corn, and the city began importing from the empire while exporting nothing.
Now in middle age, it worries me ever more that the city can’t sustain itself without imports, because the priests seem to have lost their connection to the rain god. The Chaco arroyo stopped irrigating the fields long ago, then without rain, the water in the soil began to dry out. The villages, focused on survival just as we are, send us no luxury goods such as jewelry, furniture, and clothing, but only less and less food. We make what we can from the raw materials we’re still sent, to appropriately glorify the gods and their divinely appointed king, but our art is growing less fine and less inspired as those in the capital had to learn to produce it themselves. We continue to pray and make offerings to the rain god, but I fear if they do not respond soon, we may starve. The villages are growing restless: the laborers entering the canyon are beginning to express doubt in our rain god’s power, and wonder if it’s worth continuing to offer him their limited corn.
Character 2: A Middle-Manager Farmer
My character: farmer, middle manager of operations.
My character is a farmer for the Chaco Anasazi, and he lives not in the main Chaco valley, but in a medium-small nearby satellite settlement. His job is to farm the land (i.e., plant crops and harvest), to monitor the local conditions for erosion, rainfall, arroyo cutting, and soil conditions, and assist in making sure surplus food makes it back to the main settlement. He is therefore not in charge of the farming operation, but does have a say in what gets planted, where, and when, and is privy to some of the political and managerial information in so far as it relates to running the settlement. I chose to place my character very late in the Anasazi settlement, when it was very large, and just approaching the major drought which would eventually collapse the society.
First person:
My life was fairly easy, all things considered. Our civilization was doing quite well, and my location in a satellite farming and logging settlement gave us more immediate access to food in wetter years. However, towards the end of my life, we started to experience drier and drier years, and food started to become harder to come by: a few seasons we had to borrow extra food from other settlements, and we had nothing to send back to the main settlement. Of course, we did our fair share to do the same for others: in some very wet years, other settlements had irrigation problems due to arroyo cutting. Of course, this implies a fairly effective and comprehensive supply chain, and this brought us much security and access to more luxury goods—in those drier years, I don’t know what we would have done without access to the surpluses of other encampments.
In any case, our removal from the main settlement allowed our settlement to avoid some of the in-fighting we would get wind of occasionally; often, we heard it had to do with political disagreements, and, occasionally, over jealousy that the political leaders were so well-off despite performing comparatively less manual labor than the rest of us. It was this need for more labor—in our case, not only to farm, but to haul wood from further and further destinations to the main village—that did create some tension even in our own village. Some argued that soon we would have no trees left, and that the greed of the central villagers would destroy our own way of life. No matter though, as I reached my end of life before these conflicts and the drought ever really came to a head. I worried for my children, and I assume they must have left for more fertile lands.
Character 3: Pottery Maker
Character description:
My character is a Pottery maker in Chaco Canyon. They live a modest lifestyle using water, clay, wood, fire, paints, and turquoise to create beautiful pots for higher class citizens. They do business within the Anasazi capitol and to other neighboring citizens, so they play a large role in commerce and the economy. With the drought and the decreasing number of trees in the nearby area it becomes more difficult to create the works of art and find all the resources they need.
Essay:
I began painting at a very young age, so my place in society was clear as a pottery maker. I would start my day by collecting all the supplies that I required. Clay from the floodplain, paints from grinding up colored dried clay, and making a fire from the wood I had collected the previous day. I sold my pottery within Chaco Canyon to higher class citizens than I am, but I make a decent amount of money to support myself through the seasons. I can buy food from farmers or gather other necessities that my family requires to survive.
As I got older, I started to realize that the resources I required were getting more difficult to obtain. The alluvial plain where I collected my clay was almost entirely dried up. I had to start digging deeper and searching further past my normal gathering grounds. It made my pottery take much longer to produce, but I was still making the same amount per pot, so my income greatly decreased. I thought that was the worst that could happen, and it was only a matter of time before we were blessed with rain once more. Then I began to realize it was taking me further into the mountains to get wood for my fires. I tried buying wood from local merchants, but the prices had increased so much that I couldn’t afford to just buy it. At this point it now takes me 3 times longer to produce one piece of pottery than it had in previous years. I am struggling to feed my family and due to the drought, the farmer has little to no food and the trees we would collect nuts from have already been chopped down. I see that both rich and poor are struggling, and I only hope that our hardships will end soon.
Character 4: Builder
Character description:
I am a builder in charge of gathering materials and resources for the construction of buildings. I am higher on hierarchical status because my job is very important with our growing population. The trees are becoming harder to find.
Essay:
Diamond’s factor that most applies to me is Environmental Damage. We have been consistently harvesting trees in our canyon. Because our population is rapidly increasing, these trees are neeed as resources to build more homes. Soon, we ran out of trees in our area. My duty is now to help gather trees from other mountains, this is a very grueling task and becoming more difficult each month. we are harvesting faster than they grow.
Because of my hard work, I need food for energy. Recently our food source has been affected by the unpredictable weather patterns, sometimes we have a drought which prevents food for eating, other times we are flooded and agriculture is ruined. The weather is not balanced at all. Our food supply is running short.
Character 5: 12-year-old Girl
Character description:
My character is a 12-year-old girl, and her parents are both farmers. They live in a society called Mesa Verde. She would follow her mother around and learn to do traditional women’s work like working in the fields and cooking. My character lived during the time when Anasazi settlement was starting to increase in food production and population.
Brief essay:
My life was simple. I spent most of my time with my mother. When my father went to work on the field, I would follow my mother around and watch her every move. I remember watching her make baskets and with those same baskets she would use them to gather food. With her knowledge, I was able to learn how to make baskets, gather food and cook. I also learned how to make warm clothing from animal skins to keep us warm during the cold nights/season. I recall our civilization living at high grounds while other societies lived in lower grounds. I asked my father why do we live on higher ground, and he said we get more rainfall on higher elevations compared to lower elevations. I remember my father coming home smiling. I asked him what happened that’s making you smile like that? He replied, “Rain!” There was a time when we received a good amount of rainfall, and during that time we have been getting more food. Also, that was when my mother told me I was going to be an older sibling.
A few years have passed, the weather has been getting colder. It was affecting our food production, so we had to rely on nearby neighbors to give us some of their shares. Our community didn’t only receive but we also gave our neighbors some goods as well, like good quality stones for tool making and turquoise for making ornaments. As more years passed, it was getting harder and harder to get resources. This caused civil unrest and warfare. It was horrible to see people fight over resources, especially within my community. At this point, our community has exhausted our resources. We don’t have much food left due to cold weather, little to no rainfall, soil fertility has been exhausted, our neighbors cut down all the trees, and arroyo cutting. This caused our family and other families to leave our society and find a better home.