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In 1954, archaeologists James Allen Lancaster and Don Watson and dendrochronologist Edmund Schulman asserted that a small grove of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsugamenziesii [Mirbel] Franco var. glauca [Beissener] Franco) trees in Navajo Canyon on the west side of Chapin Mesa in Mesa Verde National Park contained evidence of stone-axe-cut tree limbs. In 1965, archaeologists Robert Nichols and David Smith published an article entitled "Evidence of Prehistoric Cultivation of Douglas-Fir Trees at Mesa Verde," in which they supported the Lancaster/Watson/Schulman assertion with tree-ring dates from suspected stone-axe-cut limbs. If correct, Nichols and Smith (1965) document the only trees in the entire U.S. Southwest that contain ancient stone-axe-cut stubs and evidence of precolumbian forest management. Rather than accept their interpretations at face value, we attempt to replicate their dates through the (re)analysis of archived and recently collected tree-ring samples, and through a controlled analysis and comparison of archived and published records. We could not confirm their results, and we have no option but to reject their claim that Schulman Grove contains evidence of precolumbian tree manipulation by Ancestral Puebloan inhabitants of Mesa Verde. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores historical and archaeological questions related to female mummified remains dating to circa 2120 B.P. known as "Ester." She was one of the archaeological Basketmaker II artifacts removed from the Durango, Colorado area, taken by amateur archaeologist Zeke Flora in 1937 on advice from another amateur archaeologist Helen Sloan Daniels. Other topics include Mesa Verde National Park, repatriation of cultural property, and conflicts over access to material culture items.

Thin loess deposits on the uplands of the southeastern Colorado Plateau have previously not been well studied. We sampled deposits and soils from trenches on Hatch Point (HP) mesa near Canyonlands National Park, Utah, and from two outcrops in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. At HP, the oldest buried unit yielded 2 optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages of 10,370 and 7555 yr; the middle unit yielded 10 OSL ages from 6220 to 1385 yr; and the youngest unit had a single age of 1740 yr. At Mesa Verde (MV), three loess units are preserved in the two outcrops we examined; 6 OSL ages range from 51 to 17 ka. At least one buried soil is present between two units with ages of about 50 and 40 ka. The ages of the loess units in both study areas correspond well with OSL-dated dune sands in Canyonlands National Park and with dune sands on Black Mesa, Arizona. Particle-size distribution combined with chemical and magnetic data indicate that HP loess was derived mostly from nearby sandstone sources with a small component of far-traveled atmospheric dust, whereas MV loess was sourced both from the nearby sandstone and the San Juan River and its tributaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address aspects of the Neolithic Revolution in the Mesa Verde region of Southwest Colorado. We first propose a new method of dating habitations within the Basketmaker III period (AD 600-725) using vessel forms in pottery assemblages. Then we adapt this method to new survey and excavation data to investigate demographic processes behind the formation of Mesa Verde Pueblo society. Finally, we quantify extramural storage space across Basketmaker III households to investigate the development of private property during this period. Our results indicate that both in-migration and intrinsic growth were involved in the formation of Mesa Verde Pueblo society; that agricultural households became increasingly dispersed over time; and that household agricultural outputs took the form of a log-normal distribution typical of societies with private property rights. Collectively, these findings suggest private property rights co-evolved with agriculture and settled communities, as researchers have suggested for other world areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of climate change vary over space and time. Effective studies of human responses to climatically induced environmental change must therefore sample the environmental diversity experienced by specific societies. We reconstruct population histories from A.D. 600 to 1280 in six environmentally distinct portions of the central Mesa Verde region in southwestern Colorado, relating these to climate-driven changes in agricultural potential. In all but one subregion, increases in maize-niche size led to increases in population size. Maize-niche size is also positively correlated with regional estimates of birth rates. High birth rates continued to accompany high population levels even as productive conditions declined in the A .D. 1200s. We reconstruct prominent imbalances between the maize-niche size and population densities in two subregions from A.D. 1140 to 1180 and from A.D. 1225 to 1260. We propose that human responses in those subregions, beginning by the mid-A.D. 1200s, contributed to violence and social collapse across the entire society. Our findings are relevant to discussions of how climate change will affect contemporary societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impacts of overlapping land-use and climate on ecosystem services and landscape attributes in a sensitive dryland. It discusses temporal and spatial trends and projections for categories of land-use as well as aridification in the Colorado Plateau. It also discusses pressure of land- use and climate change on environmental resources. It presents the photographs of Canyonlands National Park, and Mesa Verde National Park.

Continuous sediment, charcoal, and pollen records were developed from a ~7-m sediment core from Prater Canyon in Mesa Verde National Park (MEVE), Colorado, USA. Sediment input into the canyon is episodic and is linked to precipitation runoff and vegetation cover. Pollen recovered from the Prater Canyon sediment core reflect the vegetation changes within the MEVE region. During the period recorded, the vegetation of the region surrounding Prater Canyon transitioned from xeric adapted species in an open environment to a more mesic, Pinus edulis–Juniperus osteosperma (piñon–juniper) woodland over the last 1500 years. Two distinct changes in fire frequency occurred. Before 4080 cal. yr BP, fires occurred at a much more frequent rate (2.5–12 fires/200 years) than from 4060 cal. yr BP to present (0–2 fires/200 years). Most importantly, the variations occurring in the charcoal record for the past 2500 years coincide with both shifts in human occupation and climate fluctuations within the region, with burning increasing during Ancestral Puebloan occupation and moist but increasingly dry conditions, and declines in both at the end of the ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’ (MCA). The record from Prater Canyon demonstrates the importance of the Ancestral Puebloans in landscape modification during their occupation from ad1 to 1300. Charcoal deposition also increased during the 20th- to 21st-century transition with the highest deposition rates of the core recorded then. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The structure at Mesa Verde National Park known historically as Mummy Lake and more recently as Far View Reservoir is not part of a water collection, impoundment, or redistribution system. We offer an alternative explanation for the function of Mummy Lake. We suggest that it is an unroofed ceremonial structure, and that it serves as an essential component of a Chacoan ritual landscape. A wide constructed avenue articulates Mummy Lake with Far View House and Pipe Shrine House. The avenue continues southward for approximately 6 km where it apparently divides connecting with Spruce Tree House and Sun Temple/Cliff Palace. The avenue has previously been interpreted as an irrigation ditch fed by water impounded at Mummy Lake; however, it conforms in every respect to alignments described as Chacoan roads. Tree-ring dates indicate that the construction of Spruce Tree House and Cliff Palace began about A.D. 1225, roughly coincident with the abandonment of the Far View community. This pattern of periodically relocating the focus of an Anasazi community by retiring existing ritual structures and linking them to newly constructed facilities by means of broad avenues was first documented by Fowler and Stein (1992) in Manuelito Canyon, New Mexico. Periods of intense drought appear to have contributed to the relocation of prehistoric Native Americans from the Far View group to Cliff Palace/Spruce Tree House in the mid-13th century and eventually to the abandonment of all Anasazi communities in southwestern Colorado in the late-13th century. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

All 16 species of bats known to occur in western Colorado are found at Mesa Verde National Park (MVNP) in the southwestern United States. Since 1996, wildfires have burned more than 70% of MVNP (>15,000 ha), potentially altering food and roosting resources for bats. During the summers of 2006-2007, we investigated roost use by reproductive female western long-eared myotis (Myotis evotis). We located 33 bat roosts in rock crevices and 1 in a juniper snag. All but 2 of the roosts were in unburned habitat. Bats roosted alone or in small groups (≤3 individuals) and switched roosts frequently (1-7 roosts per bat, median = 1.5 roosts per bat, SE = 0.5 roosts per bat). We compared occupied roosts with randomly selected unoccupied crevices and used an information theoretic approach to determine which variables were most important in determining roost use at microhabitat and landscape scales. At the microhabitat scale, maternity roosts were higher above the ground and deeper than random, unoccupied rock crevices. At the landscape scale, roosts were closer to water and farther from burned habitat than random crevices, providing reproductive female M. evotis with the best opportunities to drink and forage for insects. Tree roosts are apparently not a vital resource for reproductive female M. evotis during the summer months at our study site, presumably because of the extensive availability of rock crevices. Understanding site-specific roosting behavior is important for proper management of bat populations because differences can exist between geographic regions, even among areas with similar plant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we highlight the value of taking standardized measurements from fragmented bones of turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) from ancient sites in the American Southwest. We present turkey measurement data from two sites in the Central Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado; Albert Porter and Sand Canyon Pueblos, dating to the Pueblo II and III (AD 920-1280) periods. Our analyses indicate that fragmented bone epiphyses can successfully distinguish male from female turkeys. Such data can be used to construct population profiles of turkeys and contribute to an understanding of husbandry and the domestication process. At Albert Porter Pueblo we also investigated whether or not turkeys from the Pueblo II period (A.D. 920-1140) differed in size from turkeys during Pueblo III period (A.D. 1140-1280). Although the average bone measurements are smaller for turkeys from Pueblo II compared to Pueblo III, our data are inconclusive and limited by small sample sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, models of cultural evolution are used to examine one of most intensively studied archaeological areas in world: the central Mesa Verde region of southern Colorado (USA). I work back and forth between models in this case study to tease out new insights into culture change in the Mesa Verde region and to suggest ways that models of culture change can be improved. The results of a new research program, the Village Ecodynamics Project, are presented here and provide the most recent and refined account of settlement in the central Mesa Verde region. The study concludes that many factors contributed to culture change in the region, and it suggests that one factor has been overlooked in previous studies: the development of incipient social hierarchy. This study argues that the development of social inequality needs to be added to the mix offactors that produced culture change, especially immigration from the region during the tenth and thirteenth centuries. This study suggests that evolutionary models emphasizing cyclical change are more appropriate than unilinear models. A model of cyclical change that highlights the dimensions of demographic scale and the emergence of hierarchical social organization best describes the cultural trajectory of the Mesa Verde region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We determined the bat fauna at Mesa Verde National Park (Mesa Verde) in 2006 and 2007, characterized bat elevational distribution and reproduction, and investigated roosting habits of selected species. We captured 1996 bats of 15 species in mist nets set over water during 120 nights of sampling and recorded echolocation calls of an additional species. The bat fauna at Mesa Verde included every species of bat known west of the Great Plains in Colorado, except the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus). Some species showed skewed sex ratios, primarily due to a preponderance of males. Thirteen species of bats reproduced at Mesa Verde. Major differences in spring precipitation between the 2 years of our study were associated with differences in reproductive rates and, in some species, with numbers of juveniles captured. Reduced reproductive effort during spring drought will have a greater impact on bat populations with the forecasted increase in aridity in much of western North America by models of global climate change. We radiotracked 46 bats of 5 species to roosts and describe the first-known maternity colonies of spotted bats (Euderma maculatum) in Colorado. All 5 species that we tracked to diurnal roosts relied almost exclusively on rock crevices rather than trees or snags, despite the presence of mature forests at Mesa Verde and the use of trees for roosts in similar forests elsewhere by some of these species. Comparisons with past bat surveys at Mesa Verde and in surrounding areas suggest no dramatic evidence for effects of recent stand-replacing fires on the composition of the bat community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Analysis of debitage from Wetherill Mesa in Mesa Verde National Park indicates dramatic changes in toolstone procurement patterns through time. For much of the early occupation of Wetherill Mesa, locally available igneous and indurated shale toolstones were the primary resources utilized. During the Pueblo II period, however, there was a shift to the use of Brushy Basin chert, which outcrops approximately 20 km away By the end of the Pueblo II period, there is another change in procurement. Silicified mudstones from the Burro Canyon and Morrison formations, from approximately 10 km away, were used. These changes in toolstone provide important clues about the changing social landscape in the central Mesa Verde region over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the thirteenth century A.D., the Mesa Verde region was densely inhabited by Ancestral Pueblo peoples. By the end of that century, Ancestral Pueblo peoples no longer permanently inhabited the region. We present detailed reconstructions of precipitation based on tree rings from five geographic subregions of Ancestral Pueblo occupation (Mesa Verde, Tsegi/Kayenta, Chama, Cibola, and Santa Fe) and a consideration of distributions of archaeological ceramic styles and types from four corresponding Ancestral Pueblo subculture areas (Mesa Verde, Kayenta, Cibola, and the Northern Rio Grande) in order to explore Ancestral Pueblo strategies of adaptation to farming under conditions of often inadequate precipitation. Our analyses examine and corroborate the notion that Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the Mesa Verde region maintained long-term relationships of social interaction primarily with groups that were proximate and also experienced different and complementary patterns of precipitation. These social relationships, along with development of a marked gradient in precipitation, may have facilitated eventual migration pathways from the Mesa Verde region to the northern Rio Grande. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the occupation histories of 3,176 habitation sites, new estimates of maize-agriculture productivity, and an analysis of over 1,700 construction timbers, we examine the historical ecology of Pueblo peoples during their seven-century occupation (A.D. 600-1300) of a densely settled portion of the Mesa Verde archaeological region. We identify two cycles of population growth and decline, the earlier and smaller peaking in the late-A.D. 800s, the later and larger in the mid-A. D. 1200s. We also identify several episodes of immigration. Formation of aggregated settlements, which we term community centers, is positively correlated with increasing population and the time elapsed in each settlement cycle, and it persists during periods of regional population decline, but it does not correlate with climatic variation averaged over periods. Architectural and land-use practices depleted pinyon-juniper woodlands during the first cycle, but more stable field systems and greater recycling of construction timber resulted in more sustainable management of wood resources during the second cycle, despite much higher population densities. Our estimates for maize production are lower than previous estimates, especially for the A.D. 1200s, when population reached its peak in the study area. Even so, considerable potential agricultural production remained unused in the decades that immediately preceded the complete depopulation of our study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six large wildfires have burned in Mesa Verde National Park during the last 15 years, and extensive portions of burns were invaded by non-native plant species. The most threatening weed species include Carduus nutans, Cirsium arvense, and Bromus tectorum, and if untreated, they persist at least 13 years. We investigated patterns of weed distribution to identify plant communities most vulnerable to post-fire weed invasion and created a spatially explicit model to predict the most vulnerable sites. At the scale of the entire park, mature pion?juniper woodlands growing on two soil series were most vulnerable to post-fire weed invasion; mountain shrublands were the least vulnerable. At a finer scale, greater richness of native species was correlated with greater numbers of non-native species, indicating that habitats with high native biodiversity are at the greatest risk of weed invasion. In unburned areas, weed density increased with greater soil nitrogen and phosphorus, and lower salinity. In burned areas weed density correlated with soil nitrogen status and textural class. We also evaluated the effectiveness of a variety of weed mitigation methods; aerial seeding of targeted high-risk areas with native grasses was the most effective treatment tested. We recommend a conservative mitigation plan using natives grass seed on only the most invasible sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mesa Verde is the historical familial home of the Ancestral Pueblo People. It is a heritage center and leading archeological park that offers visitors an educational experience in a well-kept preserve. The park offers many ancient archeological sites such as the elaborate stone cliff dwelling structures, artifacts, and ceremonial kivas dug deep into the earth. Due to devastating fires over several annual seasons, attendance at Mesa Verde National Park has been disappointing. Capitalizing upon the centennial celebration in 2006, the park's 100th birthday, park officials hope to increase patronage. Historically the park has been partly responsible for bringing several hundred thousand visitors and much of the tourism dollars that flow into the remote southwestern Colorado and four-corners region each year. It is not only responsible for a direct economic impact but also an indirect economic impact found with other area tourist attractions such as hotels, restaurants, and souvenir shops. Thus, lower park attendance figures have a significant impact on the surrounding four-corners region. Tracy Chavis, Executive Director of the Mesa Verde Museum Association, knew all about the disappointing park attendance and problems the park had faced over the past few years and knew she had to do something about itÛand she knew she had to do something soon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examines the ecological significance of large fire history and dramatic vegetative changes in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Mapping of the spatial extent of all fires >10 hectare (ha) that occurred during the last 150 years within a 6600-ha and turnover time are offered. Findings of the study determine that the frequency and extent of fire during the last 50 in Mesa Verde have not been greatly vary from the natural fire regime of the late 1800s.

AbstractThe geology of Mesa Verde National Park (MVNP) poses unique problems to road construction and maintenance. Major geologic formations of the Park consist of an overlying resistant sandstone cap underlain by highly erodable shales. Once this sandstone cap is removed, the shales are easily eroded away, creating the notable mesas of the region. In many places, road construction has removed the sandstone layer and vegetation resulting in unaesthetic barren slopes that require continual maintenance and have proven difficult to revegetate. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of several cultural techniques combined with seeding and transplanting indigenous plants for revegetation of these roadcut slopes. Techniques evaluated were fertilization, mulching, soil pitting, and polyacrylamide amendments. Replicated test plots were established at three roadcut sites in MVNP to evaluate these techniques by measuring percent plant cover by species over a 4-year period. A combination of seeding grasses and transplanting forbs and shrubs appeared to be the optimal way to maintain species diversity and structure on the roadcuts while accomplishing the goal of revegetating these difficult sites. The perennial forb Aster glaucodes and the shrub Artemisia ludoviciana showed high survival when transplanted in the experimental roadcut sites. These species, as well as the perennial grass Pascopyrum smithii, also established well from seed. The addition of an organic fertilizer, in combination with mulch, proved to be the most effective method of improving vegetation cover for these and other transplanted species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the retelling of the story of Richard Wetherill by Willa Cather in the book "The Professor's House." According to the author, the real story of Wetherill is told through the character of Tom Outland when he discovers Cliff City in Blue Mesa. The author suggests that her arrival at the retelling of Wetherill's story came about indirectly through her experience discovering Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde in Colorado, her meeting with Richard Wetherill's brother, and Cather's retelling of the discovery story in her 1916 Mesa Verde essay.