Basketmaker Culture and Puebloan Origins

The Four Corners region of the United States bears witness to the incredible and vibrant culture of the ancestral Puebloan peoples and their modern descendants. If you could travel back in time to 1100 CE, you would have seen thriving agricultural communities building large pueblos and kivas and producing exquisite pottery and art. That would be a stark comparison to what you would have seen a few thousand years earlier. For most of human history in the southwest, the region was sparsely inhabited by mobile hunter-gatherers. How did such a vibrant culture emerge from such humble beginnings? Today, we're going to answer that question by looking at basket-maker culture, the bridge between ancestral Puebloan culture and the southwestern archaic cultures. By the end, I think you'll be able to appreciate that the road to the pueblos was not paved, it was woven. This episode is brought to you by my amazing Patrons. Not only do they support me financially, but they voted for this southwestern topic and it has been wonderful to research. If you, dear viewer, would like to support the show and suggest and vote on topics, you can do so on Patreon. And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. Before we begin, we need to start with everyone's favorite topic, chronology. Archaeologists have divided Puebloan chronology into very convenient periods for us. The periods that we're going to really focus on are the basket-maker 2 and basket-maker 3 periods. Now, I imagine some of you are wondering why I'm neglecting the basket-maker 1 period. Basket-maker 1 is a term that isn't really used by archaeology anymore, and that period is typically referred to as the archaic, followed by the early agricultural period. While we will discuss these periods in some detail to set the stage, the transformation we care about for this episode is in those later two basket-maker periods, between 500 BCE and 750 CE. Some chronologies you'll see may list these periods differently depending on when they were published or who's writing them. Basket-maker 2 is sometimes pushed back to include the early agricultural period at 2000 BCE-ish, and in those cases, it's usually divided into two parts, early basket-maker 2 and late basket-maker 2. For this episode, I'll be breaking the chronology into archaic, early agricultural period, basket-maker 2, and basket-maker 3. Next, we need to discuss geography. Quick disclaimer, I'll be using the term southwest when we discuss the wider cultural area, but technically, that's a bit of a misnomer. The southwest we're discussing isn't just the southwestern United States. It actually includes a decent chunk of northern Mexico. So when you hear the term southwest, just note that we may reference sites south of the U.S.-Mexican border. However, much of what we'll be discussing will be in the Four Corners region. For the viewers who are outside the United States or in the United States and failed U.S. geography, the Four Corners refers to the area where the corners of the states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona all converge, hence the name Four Corners. This region is dominated by the Colorado Plateau. Most of the plateau sits at a relatively high elevation above 1,500 meters or 5,000 feet and is quite arid. Arid as the plateau is, however, it is not as dry as the deserts to the south. Comparatively, it gets more rain, which is a good thing for would-be farmers because the rivers on the plateau, the Little Colorado and the San Juan Rivers, are usually too entrenched in the landscape to be suitable for irrigation. That said, however, rainfall can vary wildly, and this often impacts the growth of plants and the availability of plant resources, and by consequence, animals. This rocky landscape is broken up by pinyon-juniper woodlands with grasses and sagebrush, with ponderosa pine appearing at higher elevations. We should also mention that east of the plateau are the Rocky Mountains, which get more water and provide good sources of timber and minerals such as basalt, obsidian, chert, turquoise, and malachite. All in all, this was a challenging environment with a lot of potential. As we'll see, the native inhabitants were familiar with the landscape and knew how to utilize its resources effectively. To appreciate that, let's take a look at some of the first hunter-gatherers in the Southwest. In this area, we are very fortunate to have some of the earliest evidence of human presence in the Americas, so we know that humans have inhabited the region for roughly 20,000 years, all the way back to the late Pleistocene. Back then, the Southwest looked a lot different than it does now. There was much more surface water, and the low deserts of Arizona and central New Mexico had lakes and wet meadows and large megafauna like bison antiquus and mammoths. Forests were also much more prevalent over much of the Southwest. As the Pleistocene ended, global temperatures rose, and the Southwest began to dry out over the next several millennia. Between 5000 and 2000 BCE, modern climate and vegetation patterns began to emerge. Areas that had formerly been grasslands or forests became increasingly arid, and people were forced to adapt to these new conditions. Populations focused on bison hunting, for example, moved eastwards towards the plains, while those who did stay appear to have shifted to more generalized hunting and foraging strategies. In the Four Corners region, populations were very sparse and mobile. Food resources were often seasonal and widely dispersed, and archaic populations compensated for this by moving large distances to acquire the resources that they needed. This required an intimate knowledge of a wide area, and also shared knowledge of what resources were available at what time. Over time, however, food processing began to get more and more intense as the population increased. After 3200 BCE, Monos and Metates appear in the archaeological record, which show that food resources were being processed more efficiently. Population increases were slight, and the wider area was still very thinly inhabited. Most sites from this period are small temporary camps with hearths and signs of tool making. Interestingly, tool remains from these sites show that they were made with materials of high quality that came from distant sources. These people were able to travel impressive distances or network with neighbors to acquire foreign material. It's also worth keeping in mind that even though these archaic tool and cultural traditions suggest a homogeneity among its people, we shouldn't assume that these people were ethnically or linguistically homogenous. It's very likely that a lot of diversity is being masked here. These people likely belonged to different linguistic or ethnic groups that practiced similar economic strategies and produced similar tools to accomplish this. The important takeaway here is that these archaic populations were small and mobile, and they exploited seasonal resources across a large area. All that began to change with a very important development – the arrival of maize. This event is so significant that it's used to mark the boundary between the Archaic Period and the Early Agricultural Period, which I'll abbreviate as the EAP, though as I mentioned earlier, this period is also sometimes called the Early Basketmaker II Period. This boundary has shifted as archaeology has gotten better at detecting ancient maize remains. To quote the always fun to read archaeologist Stephen Lexen, the exact date of corn's arrival is a southwestern grail. We seek the earliest maize like Indiana Jones sought the cup of Christ. Great words there, Dr. Lexen. You are truly a treasure. I know I've beat this point to death in other episodes, but maize changes societies, and the Southwest was no exception to this. Maize is a mighty conqueror that leaves cornfields in its wake. To be clear, these changes weren't sudden, but gradual, and to get a good understanding of that, let's briefly look at maize's birth in Mexico and its arrival to the Southwest. Research has shown that maize was domesticated in Mexico sometime around 7000 BCE from the Teosinte plant, likely in the Balsas River Valley, and from there, it slowly spread across Mesoamerica and into North and South America. By 5000 BCE, maize cultivation was taking root across most of Central America. Slowly, maize spread north and into the Southwest. The earliest current dates for maize in the wider Southwest come from sites such as McEwen Cave, La Playa, Clearwater, Three First Shelter, and the wonderfully named Old Corn Site. The dates for maize at these sites range between 2400 BCE and 1900 BCE, so archaeologists will usually state that by 2100 BCE, maize was established in the Southwest, though the date for the EAP is usually set at 2000 BCE in most literature. It's worth pointing out that these dates come from an impressive geographic range and show that maize was spreading very quickly over a wide area. The fact that maize ever thrived at all in the Southwest is nothing short of a marvel because the local conditions really pushed maize to its limits. Maize is a tropical plant, and when it arrived in the Southwest, it had to adapt. The two big challenges were aridity and shorter growing seasons. Now, as we mentioned earlier, rain is more plentiful on the Colorado Plateau, but most rivers and streams are not conducive to irrigation. The real problem on the plateau is the shorter growing season. Frost could potentially devastate maize crops, and this would have made maize horticulture a high-risk, high-reward venture. However, over the next 2,000 years, those southwestern strains of maize slowly became increasingly heat and drought resistant and better suited to shorter growing seasons. The question of how maize arrived in the Four Corners region more specifically is a topic of ongoing debate. Traditionally, there have been two competing theories. The first is that local archaic hunter-gatherers that we discussed earlier adopted maize agriculture from their southern neighbors. The second is that agriculturalists migrated into the Four Corners area, displacing local populations and bringing maize and a distinct culture. According to the adoption theory, maize horticulture was a conscious response to increasing population density and environmental conditions. Maize provided these people with a valuable supplement to augment their diet of wild foods. The migration theory contends that proto-Uto-Aztecan migrants from the south brought maize up along with agriculture to the north from central Mexico. Much of this theory hinges on linguistic analysis to show the migration and spread of certain words and terms. However, DNA studies have failed to show evidence for a migration of southern populations into the southwest. With that said, how were these first horticulturalists using maize? As it turns out, those people were using it very lightly. They were still living their best mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle with some maize on the side. In fact, there's no evidence of any noticeable population increase during this time. Maize would have likely been planted along creeks or other wet areas so that it could grow with minimal oversight. Populations would have still made their seasonal rounds and come back later in the year to harvest the maize. You'll sometimes hear these groups referred to as farmer-foragers in a lot of literature. One big reason for this approach was the maize itself, because the maize at these early sites was not the maize you see today in cornfields, stores, and farmers markets. That stuff is all modern, the result of centuries of domestication, selective breeding, and genetic engineering. This early maize in the southwest is categorized as a small cob variety with very small seeds. Cob remains from sites at this time usually have eight to ten rows of kernels about seven centimeters long. To put that in perspective, most modern maize you'll find at the store has about 20 rows and are about 15 to 20 centimeters long. In fact, veteran southwest archaeologist R.G. Mattson has proposed that early maize may not have been originally cultivated in the southwest for its tiny seeds, but rather for the sugar in its stalks. Now keep in mind that this maize still had to be tended to once it was grown. Maize can't propagate on its own. It needs other agents to open the husk and disperse the seeds. It's not like you can plant maize somewhere and come back years later to find that it's colonized the area, so this does represent an important investment of attention and labor. This also helped maize adapt because faster growing and more drought resistant strains tended to thrive in these conditions and were more likely to be replanted. There's also good evidence that some people were storing maize for future use. At the old corn site up on the Colorado Plateau, excavations found many pits that had maize remains showing that some maize was being stored at the site. There's also evidence at other sites of simple cribbed structures that were likely used as temporary shelters. By and large, we should think of people from the EAP as mobile hunter gatherers who were experimenting with maize but weren't yet dependent on it. We also have remains of material culture from this time period that can shed light on these people. Cave sites in particular have preserved artifacts that would have decayed long ago in other environments. These perishables show that these populations were very familiar with local materials and used them to create fine tools and woven goods. Items made from cordage and plant fibers are particularly well represented. Twined bags used to carry food and materials have been recovered in the Four Corners area. Twining goes all the way back to the Archaic and in fact, twined bags dating to 7000 BCE have been recovered in the Great Basin to the north. Another old technology well represented at this time is basketry. Archaic and EAP baskets were made by coiling on a one-rod foundation and many examples have been recovered across the southwest from various cave sites. In some cases, entire burial shrouds were woven for deceased people. These baskets provided light and portable means of storage that were perfect for a mobile population. Around 500 BCE, there are some important developments in the southwest and this ushers in the Basketmaker II period. During this period in the Four Corners region, agriculture began to take hold and people began living in the same area for longer periods. Now these developments weren't entirely out of left field because such developments had already been occurring in the southern southwest. Down in the Tucson Basin, people were beginning to invest in agricultural infrastructure like irrigation canals. They were beginning to grow maize in areas that would have hitherto been unsuitable for it. The first houses and storage structures also began to appear in the basin around 1000 BCE. If that sounds interesting and you want to learn more about the trajectory of the Tucson Basin, you can pick up that story by watching our HoHoCom episode. I bring this up because those southern agriculturalists likely had a hand in what happened in the Four Corners region next. But before we cover that, we need to establish something important about Basketmaker II culture. Archaeologists divide Basketmaker II culture into two groups, Eastern and Western Basketmaker II. Though there are many similarities, there are also important aspects that differentiate them and those differences are not strictly geographic. They extend into the material culture as well, and these are worth discussing briefly before we discuss Basketmaker origins. Remember those weaving techniques I mentioned earlier? They provide very valuable insight. When archaeologists analyze these goods, they aren't just looking at decoration and style, but rather at the production techniques. These are usually much better indicators of cultural identity since the motor skills and habits of these methods are more culturally ingrained and less likely to change than decoration. Western techniques for weaving and basket making tend to show closer affinities to techniques used in the Great Basin, as well as Californian coiling and twining techniques, while Eastern techniques continue the local archaic traditions. We also see differences in ritual behavior as well, particularly in mortuary practices. Multi-individual burials are much more common among Western basket makers, and scholars have noted that child burials tend to be richer than their Eastern counterparts. Eastern burials, by contrast, are far more likely to be aligned to the North, while Western burials show weaker alignment patterns. You may be asking why we're discussing these seemingly subtle differences. Archaeologists believe that these may indicate different linguistic and ethnic groups. Specifically, they theorize that Western basket makers were probably Uto-Aztecan speakers and that Eastern basket makers were Tinoan speakers. This is interesting because it suggests that several modern Puebloan groups have their origins during this time. To this day, Western Pueblos in Arizona are much more likely to speak an Uto-Aztecan language, while Eastern Pueblos in New Mexico are much more likely to speak Tinoan or Keresen languages. While we're talking about languages, it's worth pointing out that Uto-Aztecan was a historically large language family that stretched from the Great Basin down the Pacific coast all the way into Mexico. This language continuum likely aided in the spread of maize and other goods and ideas from Mesoamerica into the Southwest. Scholars believe that Western basket makers were the result of new arrivals from the South, based on Basket Maker 2 sites throughout Northern Arizona and Southern Utah that get increasingly younger the further north we go. This suggests that maize farmers from the South migrated north in search of new lands to cultivate and encountered the local EAP inhabitants. In a 2018 article, Linda McNeil and David Schall made a strong case that these Southern migrants formed very close, beneficial kinship ties with the locals, who themselves had migrated out of Great Basin during Late Archaic times. They point out that local Uto-Aztecan languages, specifically Hopi, have loanwords related to agriculture that came from Southern Uto-Aztecan languages. They also highlight changes in rock art on the Colorado Plateau that appears during the Basket Maker 2 period. Specifically, they argue that San Juan anthropomorphic style rock art represents a fusion between the local Glen Canyon Linear style and the Palavayu style from the Colorado Basin to the South, and even drew upon motifs that may have even had Mesoamerican roots. I personally find this very compelling. Not only does it paint a very interesting and complex portrait of Basket Maker populations, but it also sheds light on the adoption of full-time agriculture. Now let's not get too bogged down in differences here because there are a lot of important developments across Basket Maker 2 culture. Let's go back to agriculture. As I mentioned earlier, people living in the Four Corners during the EAP were still highly mobile, but that was changing. Maize was becoming a larger and larger part of Basket Maker diets. This can be seen a few ways in the archaeological record. One way we see this is in the ratios of carbon-13 isotopes. Just as background, this is a means by which archaeologists and paleontologists can measure the sources of food that humans or animals consumed in the past. In the EAP period, these values are often negative and show diets lacking in maize or with very little maize consumption. By the time we get to the Basket Maker 2 period, those values rise substantially to reflect a diet that is much more reliant on maize. People weren't just growing more maize, they were also growing better maize. Remember when I said earlier that early maize was tiny with only 8-10 rows per cob? By the time of the Basket Maker 2 period, cobs started getting slightly larger and 10-12 row cobs show up with increasing frequency in the archaeological record. To be clear, this isn't a dramatic change, but it shows that Basket Maker people were getting better and better at domesticating maize. They would have known to save the seeds from the most productive plants and plant them next year. However, there's another interesting reason. Genetic studies have shown that around 1000 BCE, a new wave of maize hit the southwest from Mexico and it's likely that this played a role in maize domestication across the southwest. Now, this wasn't the only new arrival from the south to augment the Basket Maker food supply. After 1000 BCE, squash started to appear in diets. 500 years later, beans entered southwestern diets. Wild beans are known to have been exploited earlier, but common domesticated beans are very important for maize farmers because they complement maize very well. Beans can grow up the stalk of the maize plant for support, and more importantly, they add nitrates back into the soil and help replenish depleted soil nutrients. This would have been a boon for people increasing their maize use. That said, the three sisters of maize, beans, and squash were not the only plants that these people were making use of. Wild plants such as wolfberry, Mexican crucio, goosefoot, amaranth, brown cherry, tansy mustard, and hog potato were all harvested and exploited. Some of these plants were forged in the wild, but some, such as goosefoot and amaranth, were allowed to grow in fields. For those who are curious, we are not talking about domesticated goosefoot or amaranth. These are wild varieties. Speaking of domestication, there is one other important domesticate that appeared during the basketmaker 2 period, and that's our lovely holiday staple, the turkey. At the aptly named Turkey Pen Ruins site, coprolites from turkeys were recovered that showed that they were domesticated and subsisted on a diet of maize. Just as an FYI, coprolite is the scientific term for ancient fossilized feces. The more you know, kids. Genetic material recovered from these coprolites has shown that these turkeys were not domesticated locally in the southwest, and most likely came from turkey populations to the east in Texas and Oklahoma, though those origins are still being investigated. Turkeys were useful not just for meat, but also for their bones and feathers. There's also much more infrastructure around farming and food storage. Basketmaker 2 sites will often have bell-shaped storage pits dug into the ground that were used for food storage, but more important are pit houses. These dwellings allowed people to stay for much longer periods where maize was being grown to tend to the crops and to protect any stored food. Pit houses were constructed over a shallow pit dug into the earth. Around a central hearth, four posts would have been set to hold up a central roof. Around this frame, smaller beams would be set into the walls and then covered with branches and plant material, followed by a layer of earth. A hole in the middle of the roof would be left open to allow smoke to escape. Circulation was also controlled by a set of wing walls and deflectors made of stone slabs that allowed air to come in but not extinguish the fire. Entrances usually faced south and were lined with slabs. This design was also very thermally efficient and could conserve heat very well in cold weather. Looks real cozy if you ask me! Now, pit houses weren't ubiquitous across the Basketmaker region. Depending on available resources or the location, houses could also be built on the ground with a cribbed roof, similar to earlier archaic designs. But as we'll see, the pit house design proved to be very influential in later Puebloan architecture. Another important development around 200 CE was pottery. In a way, pottery wasn't some radical new discovery. Earlier people in the southwest probably knew from everyday experience that clay hardens in fire. In fact, there are fired clay beads and figurines in the Tucson Basin as old as 800 BCE. Rather, pottery represents a radical new application of age-old knowledge. Earlier archaic and EAP people probably didn't make use of pottery because its weight and fragility were not suited to a mobile lifestyle. With agriculture becoming a bigger and bigger focus, these early farmers needed better ways to store and cook food, and pottery was the answer. Basketmaker pottery is made up of simple, utilitarian brownwares, a style that was common across the entire southwest. These aren't the fine, beautifully decorated southwestern pots and bowls that we all know and love. Those are going to come much later. By the end of the Basketmaker II period, pottery was widespread across the Four Corners region, and it really helped illustrate the shift toward sedentism. Now don't get the idea that these farmers were simple yokels who couldn't appreciate finer things, because there's a rich material culture here. We briefly mentioned Basketmaker II mortuary practices, and these burials often have fine and exotic grave goods. Marine shells from the Pacific Coast, stone pipes, quartz crystals, and non-local tool materials appear in burials, showing that not only were these people of taste, but also people who were linked into trading and exchange networks. These networks were probably very important for Basketmaker groups because they would have been a lifeline in the event of a crop failure. True to their name, the Basketmakers were also expert basket weavers that wove beautiful baskets, sandals, and bags. Prior to widespread adoption of pottery, these would have acted as storage vessels for food and even water. To make a watertight basket, all they needed to do was to line a basket with pine pitch. Some of these can be beautifully patterned with different materials, like this example here. There's an interesting change in basketry during the Basketmaker II period, and that is the spread of the two-rod foundation coiling technique. This is an interesting development because coiled baskets with a two-rod foundation are usually stronger and more rigid. I personally interpret this as a sign that these people needed stronger means of storage. Before pottery, this would have been the best portable storage option available. Weaving wasn't just a survival skill, but an artistic medium through which different Basketmaker communities could express themselves. Another important medium for Basketmaker art is rock art. Basketmaker rock art is a huge topic on its own that someone smarter and more learned than I could do an entire episode on, but we're just going to hit the highlights here. If this is your jam, or I've piqued your interest and you want to know more, I recommend checking out the work of Polly Shafsma and Sally Cole. They've written a lot of great stuff on Southwestern rock art, and they can guide you through this topic far better than I can. Most rock art dated to Basketmaker culture is painted with red, white, and yellow pigments, although rare examples of black, gray, green, and blue petroglyphs do exist. One of the most common motifs are broad-shouldered humans or anthropomorphic figures that often have trapezoidal, rectangular, or triangular torsos. These figures are often depicted with elaborate headdresses, masks, jewelry, and sashes. Handprints are also common in many works as well. Flute players that seem to foreshadow the famous Cocapelli figures also show up in Basketmaker art, although these earlier versions lack Cocapelli's signature humpback. These designs are usually painted in very visible and public areas on alcove walls, cliffs, and boulders. Many different interpretive frameworks have been suggested for this rock art. Some have speculated that these figures represent people in shamanic trances. Others have suggested that they are territorial markers, and others have interpreted these as mythological or historical narratives. Again, if you want to go into the weeds on this stuff, there's lots of excellent literature available to the public that you can find. One thing that occasionally pops up in rock art are depictions of violence and war trophies. Evidence of trauma can also be seen in Basketmaker 2 burials, and it's believed that many of these instances resulted from violence between different groups. Part of this is to be expected. Agriculturalists storing food can be a good rating target, and in such cases, they have to protect their food and goods. However, between 200 and 400 CE, archaeologists also find the earliest evidence of the bow and arrow in the southwest, so this may have fueled some of the violence. Over the next few centuries, the bow and arrow would replace the atlatl as the hunting tool of choice across the southwest. Basketmaker culture really matures and comes into full bloom during the Basketmaker 3 period, which began at approximately 500 CE. During this period, we see elements develop that are going to be distinctly Puebloan in the future. The most important development is the emergence of full blown villages in the Four Corners area. If people weren't fully sedentary in the Basketmaker 2 period, they were now. One way that this is seen is in the elaboration of pit houses. Again, we're going to generalize a bit here since there is some regional variation. Typical pit houses on the Colorado Plateau would have had two chambers, an antechamber used for storage, and a main chamber that acted as the living and work space. In such designs, people would have entered from a hole in the roof. Now, these people were not living in little isolated pit house homesteads, but in farming villages where groups could farm maize, beans, and squash and raise turkeys. As the population grew, more and more people settled in these villages. These could range in size from small hamlets with a few houses to larger villages with dozens of pit houses. Some of these pit houses could also be quite large, able to house many people and store huge amounts of food. These were likely built by prosperous families, and it shows that people were beginning to accumulate real wealth. Excavations show that they were also storing more and more food. At the site of LA-4169 in northern New Mexico on the upper San Juan River, clay-lined storage pits were excavated that were large enough to store enough maize to feed at least 138 people, or 27 families, for an entire year. Several Basketmaker 3 settlements also had stockades built, though it's debated what these stockades were for. Some have suggested that these were erected for defense against rivals and enemies, but other scholars have pointed out that these may have been erected to help keep turkeys, dogs, and possibly the wayward toddler from escaping the village. I'll point out that these aren't mutually exclusive, and both can be true, too. Whatever dangers existed outside the walls, they didn't impact social and economic relations between communities. Old trade networks continued to thrive during this period. Materials such as chert and obsidian and exotic goods such as marine shells and exotic feathers continue to be exchanged. These villages also show a new sense of community emerging with the introduction of a new type of building, the kiva. Kivas were large subterranean rooms that acted as community or ceremonial spaces. For those of you familiar with your southwestern history and lore, you know that these are a defining feature of Puebloan architecture and ceremony. You can see examples here from different areas of the southwest. Even in many modern Puebloan communities, kivas are still maintained and used. How exactly these were used during this period isn't known for sure, but they were likely sites of ceremonies that promoted social unity and cohesion. Kivas likely evolved out of large pit houses, and you can see how there are some similarities with the shape, entrances, and the use of deflectors to manage air circulation. These kivas represented a significant investment of community labor. A good example of this can be seen at the Dillard site in Colorado. This village had a kiva that had three different floor layers, showing that this kiva wasn't just built, but continually maintained and renovated by the community. Interestingly, the Dillard site also shows pit houses of varying styles from other areas, showing that people from all over were beginning to congregate in these large villages. One particularly large Basketmaker III settlement can be found in Chaco Canyon, at Shabak Etshi village. Over a hundred pit houses were excavated from the site in the 1920s. This place was really thriving, although it's believed by scholars that not all of these pit houses were inhabited at the same time. Other important changes in these villages are seen in the pottery that they were making. First, brownwares fell out of style. The basketmakers broke away from that earlier pan-southwestern tradition and began to manufacture graywares. These first graywares are very simple and undecorated, but they do show more variety in design. Large cooking vessels, oyas, and other specialized pots show up in archaeological remains. By the end of the Basketmaker III period, they were beginning to be decorated with black-painted designs. These pigments were either derived from iron-rich or manganese-rich minerals or organic sources such as Rocky Mountain Beeweed. These are very simple black-on-white designs, but such black-on-white wares are going to become a defining, almost iconic feature of later ancestral Puebloan ceramics. The Basketmaker III period ends with the Pueblo I period and the emergence of ancestral Puebloan culture. After about 700 to 750 CE, residential and storage structures began to be built above ground in buildings that we would recognize as Pueblos. In some transitional settlements, these were still connected with pit houses. In the centuries to come, Pueblos would be constructed in block units, often connected to kivas. Beautiful pottery, basketry, and rock art would become the calling cards of their ancestral Puebloan inhabitants. Now if you want to continue into the next chapter of this story in ancestral Puebloan history, you're in luck because I've already made that video and you can check out our episode on Chaco Canyon. It more or less picks up this story in the San Juan Basin. Transitional cultures like the Basketmaker culture often get neglected in popular literature and media. Academics will have a field day with them, but that doesn't always trickle down to the public. As a result, basketmakers are usually condensed into a few pages in an early book chapter, or perhaps a sentence or two on park signage before the exciting ancestral Puebloan showcase. And that's a shame because the Basketmaker period represents a fascinating transition of mobile hunter-gatherers to successful farmers living in large communities. When maize first hit the region, these were very isolated people spread out over an imposing landscape. But maize couldn't change that on its own. It was very far away from its comfort zone, and over the centuries, devoted horticulturalists had to figure out how to get this tropical plant to thrive in an arid environment. Once that happened, these people transformed into seasonal farmers living in pit houses before eventually becoming village dwellers building public architecture. It's very interesting that the most iconic piece of Puebloan architecture, the kiva, developed out of these humble pit houses. I've always wondered if later ancestral Puebloans sitting in their kivas remembered their ancestors who once lived in those pit houses. It's a good illustration of how even modern Puebloan culture calls back to that Basketmaker heritage and how the Basketmaker legacy is alive and well today in the Southwest. And that's going to wrap us up for today. Special thanks to my patrons listed here. You guys are the best and picked a fantastic topic. If you'd like to join the ranks of these fine individuals and support the show, you can do so on Patreon. The link will be in the description. Don't forget to subscribe, like the video, and follow us on Facebook. Take care and we'll see you in our next episode.