Great Kiva Aztec Ruins National Monument ~ Aztec, New Mexico
An Ancestral Community
The River Givers Life
The Animas River flows out of the San Juan Mountains & across the plains of northwestern New Mexico. Near today's city of Aztec, early farmers took advantage of the river's year-round water. Later, ancestral Puebloan culture developed in the Four Corners region.
In the 1000s the ancestral Puebloans began building a large complex overlooking the river. When construction ceased in the later 1200s, the community consisted of great houses, kivas, (circular ceremonial chambers), small residential pueblos, earthworks, & roads. The formal layout, purposeful landscape modifications, & orientation & visual relationships among buildings indicate a master design. Over a span of 200 years it reached its final expression, long after the blueprint was conceived & building began.
Most prominent are the great houses-well-planned public buildings of many connected rooms surrounding a central plaza. By 1105 people began harvesting wood from distant sources to build the largest structure, now known as Aztec West. This great house took its final form by 1130.
Great Kiva Aztec Ruins National Monument ~ Aztec, New Mexico
An Ancestral Community
The River Givers Life
The Animas River flows out of the San Juan Mountains & across the plains of northwestern New Mexico. Near today's city of Aztec, early farmers took advantage of the river's year-round water. Later, ancestral Puebloan culture developed in the Four Corners region.
In the 1000s the ancestral Puebloans began building a large complex overlooking the river. When construction ceased in the later 1200s, the community consisted of great houses, kivas, (circular ceremonial chambers), small residential pueblos, earthworks, & roads. The formal layout, purposeful landscape modifications, & orientation & visual relationships among buildings indicate a master design. Over a span of 200 years it reached its final expression, long after the blueprint was conceived & building began.
Most prominent are the great houses-well-planned public buildings of many connected rooms surrounding a central plaza. By 1105 people began harvesting wood from distant sources to build the largest structure, now known as Aztec West. This great house took its final form by 1130.