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Pueblo Architecture
The roots of traditional Pueblo architecture can readily be traced through the communities of the people who were the ancestors of modern Pueblo people. One group, named the "Anasazi" by archaeologists and now often called the "Ancestral Pueblo," built multi-room, multi-story structures throughout the Four Corners area, including major sites at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. Abandoned ancestral villages still exist on the Hopi and Zuni reservations.
People other than those called the Anasazi were also probably the ancestors of modern Pueblo people, including the Mogollon, who lived in central and southern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. One well known culture within this region was located in the Mimbres River Valley. The Mimbres people made exquisitely decorated black-on-white pottery.
An illustration of the Pueblo structure shows the relationships between the sleeping and living rooms, the storage rooms, and roof top patios.
Drawing of cross section of a Pueblo. Based on a drawing by architect Victor Mindeleff, who visited Zuni and Hopi Pueblos in the 1880s. (From Nabokov and Easton 1989).
The rooms were accessed by ladder through a hole in the roof. Many of the storage rooms were accessible only from other rooms, and had no exterior entrances.
Men and women built the structure together, with men gathering the wood and shaping the stone blocks. Women built the walls and covered the stone with adobe plaster, which was renewed each year. The wooden floor and roof beams included vigas, the large beams, and latillas, the lighter poles placed in a perpendicular relationship to the vigas. Interior floors were plastered, and the outside roof was covered with brush, then grass or straw, then adobe plaster. Water drainage from the roof was aided by spouts made from old pottery fragments.
Old Oraibi pueblo, ca. 1900. Members of the Snake Society emerge from their kiva.
The architecture of each modern Pueblo tribe is unique in some respects, but the patterns are similar enough to permit a general profile of the Pueblo structures. Some of the most significant differences are found between the Western Pueblos and the Eastern, or Rio Grande Pueblos.
Many of the Rio Grande Pueblos recognize moieties, a two-part division of each community. Two examples of moiety names are the Squash and Turquoise. The moieties are associated with winter (Turquoise) and summer (Squash), and they sponsor the ceremonies that occur during their season. Moiety membership sometimes determines where a family lives, and the community is sometimes divided into two sectors, one for each moiety. A few communities have both clans and moieties, but most tribes with strong moieties do not place much importance upon clan relationships.
The Hopi, Zuni, and Acoma tribes in the western region had a traditionally matrilineal descent system, and recognized clans based on the maternal line. Clan relationships were very important in the Western Pueblo tribes, and clan members often occupied adjoining rooms and spaces. A diagram of the Hopi community at Walpi illustrates clan-based residential relationships.
Clan houses at Walpi Village, Hopi. (Based on Nabokov and Easton 1989).
The kiva is the oldest type of religious structure in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere. Kivas are often partly or completely subterranean, like the pithouse from which they developed more than one thousand years ago. Many kivas have features relating to their religious and ceremonial functions, such as the sipapu, a hole in the floor of the kiva that symbolizes the passageway between the earth surface world and the underworlds through which, the Pueblos believe, humans passed on their way to the present world. Kivas may be associated with clans or religious societies. Kivas in the western Pueblos are usually rectangular, while they are usually circular in the Rio Grande area.
Casa Rinconada, a great kiva at Chaco Canyon (63 feet in diameter).
Inside a Zuni kiva, 1899
Kivas are used for many purposes, and women sometimes use them as well as men, but they are usually associated with men's activities, including prayer and meditation, kachina dance preparations, initiation of young clan members, male clan members' social gatherings, and men's council meetings to discuss important issues.
Some members of Pueblo tribes continue to live in traditional pueblo dwellings, and the kivas continue to be used for ceremonies.
Source: Nabokov, Peter and Robert Easton. Native American Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
