Durango Rock Shelters Archeology Site is also known as the Fall Creek Rock Shelters Site. An
Ancient Pueblo People
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, an ...
(
Anasazi
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, a ...
) archaeological site, it is located in
Durango in
La Plata County, Colorado
La Plata County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 55,638. The county seat is Durango. The county was named for the La Plata River and the La Plata Mountains. "La plata" means "the ...
. People from the
Late Basketmaker II and
Basketmaker III Era
The Basketmaker III Era () also called the "Modified Basketmaker" period, was the third period in which Ancient Pueblo People were cultivating food, began making pottery and living in more sophisticated clusters of pit-house dwellings. Hunting ...
s inhabited the site between AD 1 and 1000.
''National Register of Historic Places - La Plata County, Colorado''
American Dreams, Inc. Retrieved 10-16-2011.
The site is also known as "5LP4134".
Discovery
Earl H. Morris conducted an excavation of this open talus site in Animas Valley in 1938–1939. It was the first site where dwellings had been found of the early Basketmakers with actual house structures, one of which he describes as follows:
A site for the dwelling was secured by digging a drift into the steep hillside and piling the excavated earth and stone out in front until a terrace large enough to accommodate the projected house had been provided. The floor area was scooped out to shallow saucer shape—in this case 9 m. in diameter—and coated with mud. At the margins, the mud curved upward to end against the half-buried foot logs which were the basal course of the wall. The walls were composed of horizontal wood and mud masonry. They rose with an inward slant to a little better than head height, then were cribbed for a distance to reduce the diameter of the flat portion of the roof, which was of clay supported by parallel poles, The arc of stones was a retaining device placed to hold back the ever-growing accumulation of refuse that was dumped at the brink of the terrace.[''Man of the San Juan Valley: The Basketmakers.'']
Aztec Ruins National Monument, National Park Service. Retrieved 10-16-2011.
See also
* Indigenous peoples' sites in Colorado
References
External links
Fall Creek Canyon Basketmaker mummy ("Esther")
Fall Creek (Durango) Rock Shelters:Reanalysis of Basketmaker II Site
Durango Rock Shelters (North and South Fall Creek Canyon), Tree-Ring Bulletin
{{Navbox prehistoric caves
Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Colorado
La Plata County, Colorado
Rock shelters in the United States
National Register of Historic Places in La Plata County, Colorado