Back in Time Day 2 - Site 1

 Welcome to Tuzigoot Nat'l Monument

Tuzigoot (pronounced tu z goot) and other pueblos throughout the 

Verde Valley were occupied for hundreds of years, longer than the 

United States had been a country.  They thrived and prospered.  

But in the late 1300’s they began to leave...

Tuzigoot is Apache for “crooked water", and  is the remnant of a Southern Siaqua 

village built between 1000 and 1400.

It crowned the summit of a long ridge rising 120 feet above the Verde Valley.

  The original pueblo was two stories high in places with 87 ground 

floor rooms.  There were few exterior doors; entry was by ladders 

through roof openings.    

The village began as a small cluster of rooms in habited by some 

50 persons for 100 years.  In the 1200’s the population doubled and then

 doubled again.

The archeological excavation at Tuzigoot was done between 1933-1935. 

It was led by Louis Caywood and Edward Spicer, who were both graduate 

students at the University of Arizona at the time. 

Today, many of the artifacts uncovered by Caywood and Spicer are on display

 in the Tuzigoot Museum Collection.  Built in 1936, the museum was 

designed specifically to echo the construction techniques used in the 

Tuzigoot pueblo. All but a handful of the artifacts on display in the 

museum were found here on site, and all of them allow us tiny glimpses into 

the daily life, work, and art of people who built these walls 

a thousand years ago.  Let’s look inside the museum.

As a textile artist and tapestry weaver for about 40 years, I

was very interested in the woven items.  (Remember you can

click on any photo for a larger view.)

Most of us who can remember the 60's especially on the West Coast,

can certainly remember those tie-dye t-shirts that we wore!!!

Well, we weren't the first...

This fragment appealed to me.  It is a polychrome woven strap

very detailed and only about 1/2" wide,

woven in tapestry technique 4000-2000 years ago.

And this guy is a "Split Twig" Figurine dating back 

4000-2000 years also. 

(Remember to click on any picture for a larger view.)

Carved arrowheads

The most precious included azurite, malachite, and salt.

Perhaps this is where "nose" piercing got it's start, but these

pendents were worn as "eardrops".

This photo features arrowheads that date back to 6,000-1500 years ago.

You might want to click on this photo for a larger view...

This piece of pottery is Jeddito Black on Yellow and was produced from 

1350 to 1425.   The Ancestral Pueblo ceramicists in northern Arizona 

 began using a highly select clay source and a new coal-firing technique

 to create fine yellow wares. The clay was fired at high temperatures in

 an oxidizing environment to produce a creamy yellow base color and dense 

ceramic wall that would nearly ring when tapped. Artisans decorated

 these yellow wares with geometric and abstract designs executed with 

contrasting iron-based (iron and manganese oxide) pigments, as visible here. 

Jeddito Yellow Ware vessels generally present a select repertoire 

of geometric and figural motifs, including birds and flowers. 

As we stepped outside this is what we heard... and this soothing sound

accompanied us the entire time.   Play the video and carry 

the sound with you...

The human history of the Verde Valley begins around ten thousand years ago, 

when the southwest was cooler and wetter than it is today. Paleolithic 

hunter-gatherers traveled through a greener, lusher Verde Valley, 

filled with pinyon pine, shrub live oak, and juniper. 

Click on this photo to learn about the construction techniques

used here.

Living on hilltops, people had a line of sight between households 

and could monitor their world. 

 By building where they did, no 

farmland was sacrificed and they avoided the mosquitoes 

and floods that living next  to the river invited.

The first documentation of pueblos in the European-American record 

dates to 1855.  Antoine Leroux, a well-known mountain man

 and trail guide, passed through the Verde Valley in 1854,

 and reported this the following year:

"The (Verde) river banks were covered with ruins of stone houses and regular 

fortifications... which had not been occupied for centuries. They built

upon the most fertile tracts of the valley and where were signs of 

irrigation and cultivation. 

The walls were of solid masonry, of rectangular form, some 

twenty or thirty paces in length, and yet remaining ten 

or fifteen feet in height."