MESA VERDE SETTLEMENT HISTORY AND RELOCATION.

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]