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<\/a><\/DIV><\/p>\nMontezuma Castle National Monument<\/B> Thanks to the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt celebrated it by naming and declaring four National Monuments as having such historic and cultural significance, one of these was Montezuma castle – one of the best preserved examples of cliff dwellings in the country. This 45-50 room Sinagua pueblo ruin sheltered into a natural alcove in a cliff face overlooking Beaver Creek for 400 years is a phenomenal work of art. It was excavated in 1933, and although little artifacts remained, the architecture alone made it shine above others. Early visitors were allowed entrance into the castle by climbing a series of ladders up the limestone cliffs, but due to damages from tourism, it was closed off in 1951. The park consists of over 826 protected acres at the intersection of the Colorado Plateau, Colorado Basin, and Colorado Range. The park attracts over 350,000 visitors a year and is open 7 days a week from 8 am until 5 pm, except being closed for Christmas. The National Park Service has a wonderful museum below at the gate covering the history of the Sinagua and how the cliff dwellings were constructed, displays some of the artifacts recovered, tools used for life, and presents a gift shop for tourists. The dwellings were first built and used by the Sinagua culture, a pre-Columbian peoples who were distinctly related to the Hohokam who once lived along the valley floor. The cliff dwelling is 5 stores in height and took over five centuries to construct. The construct is stone and mortar buildings with 20 rooms that could have housed upwards of 50 people. Carved into a limestone high cliff, the natural alcove shades the room from sun and rain. It took much skill to create this masterpiece, had an incredibly defensive standpoint, and was difficult to climb up into even with the ladders. There is evidence in another cliff wall that a earlier larger dwelling, but nothing remains of it. Original artifacts remaining were minimal as the area had been highly looted through the ages. It was occupied from 1100 C.E. to 1425 C.E. with its flourishing peak around 1300 C.E. Many tribes trace their roots to this pueblo, including several Hopi clans. This makes the Castle a pilgrimage point for the Hopi and other tribes who conduct religious ceremonies at this place. The first Euro-American contact was in the 1860s which gave it the name “Montezuma Castle” a big misnomer as the Aztec Emperor of Mexico never had anything to do with this community. In fact, it was built and abandoned at least 100 years long before he was ever born. The area was briefly abandoned due to volcanic ash that came from the Sunset Crater Volcano, and its likely the sediment from that ash aided with Sinagua agricultural success. During this brief flash of history, they lived on the hills nearby, then in 1125 re-settled in the Verde Vally and re-cycled the irrigation systems set up by their ancestors the Hohokam. They evacuated the area for an unknown as of yet reason around 1425 C.E. Theories for this ranged from droughts, clashes with the Yavapai people who moved into the Valley, and\/or warfare. <\/p>\n “Timeless Beauty: Montezuma castle invites us to pause in wonder at the ingenuity of the people who began building it over 700 years ago. Ancestors of today’s Puebloan peoples built and occupied the Castle. We can only speculate why they chose to build here and how they lived in this magnificent cliff dwelling. Both Montezuma and Castle are misnomers. In the 1800s European Americans were fascinated with Inca, May, and Aztec civilizations and gave southwestern sites exotic names, in this case for Emperor Montezuma II – who lived long after the Castle was constructed. The Yayapai call this place the home of the protectors of the Yavapai. The Hopi refer to it as both Sakataka, place where the step ladders are going up and Wupat’pela for long high walls. Due to looting, by the early 1900s much of what the Castle’s residents left behind was gone. Damage to the building increased as visitors climbed ladders to walk through the rooms. Now this dwelling is only accessed for inspection, maintenance, and research.” ~ marker, Montezuma Castle, NM. <\/p>\n “Creating a home: To construct their cliff home, residents made use of a naturally eroded alcove and fit 20 rooms into the shape of its contours. Why build a home in a cliff face? There are many possibilities: proximity to water and farmland, to stay above floods, or for protection, the view, or the southern exposure that afforded winter solar heat and summer shade. A ready-made shelter also meant fewer walls and roofs to construct for housing, storage, workspace, customs, and rituals. To organize and partition the alcove space, builders created walls with river cobbles and limestone held together with mud mortar. Mud plaster covered and sealed the walls. For roof beams and floors between multi-storied rooms, they mostly used local sycamore along with some alder and ash, but also carried in fir and pine from a distance. The original roof beams protruding from the wall to the right of the tower and the large beam ending in the wall above the tower provide a sense of scale – the castle is not as high up or as large as it might appear. Each group living in the Castle likely had their own room, with roughly 140 square feet (13 sq. meters) or about 17.5 feet by 8 feet (5.3 m x 2.4 m) on average. Ceilings were at about 5 feet (1.5 meters). Peep holes and doorways provided light in the morning and early afternoon, but rooms were dark in the late afternoon and evening. Women or children likely did the plastering including annual patching of exterior walls that eroded easily – their hand prints are still visible in the plaster today.” ~ marker, Montezuma Castle, NM. <\/p>\n “Cycles of Care: Around the year 1400 C.E. people began leaving their homes here. Five hundred years later, its walls were still largely intact. The builders chose their home site wisely, taking advantage of the shelter that a natural alcove provided. The majority of what you see today is original, and the Castle is thought to be one of the best preserved sites from the period, likely due to its inaccessibility. Hopi and other Native consultants say dwellings like this were meant to recycle back to earth after the people left. However, in 1906 the Castle became a national monument to be managed for present and future generations. A variety of preservation treatments were applied to help withstand hundreds of thousands of visitors and keep the walls standing. Whenever possible, archaeologists attempt to match today’s treatment more closely with the original materials and building details, applying the minimum necessary to protect the integrity of the structure. ” ~ marker, Montezuma Castle, NM. <\/p>\n “Aloft but not alone – Water, shelter, building materials, arable land, and other environmental conditions made the Verde valley an ideal place to live. Montezuma Castle is the most obvious structure here, but it was part of a larger community that included rooms here and in castle A to your left. The loose stones at the top of the small hill in front of you are the remnants of eight to ten pueblo rooms. Because of the bountiful resources scattered, small farming villages developed from roughly 600-1100 followed by larger settlements like the Castle complex. By 1200, communities extended all along the Verde River and its tributaries, which had floodplains for cultivating crops. These drainages were also travel corridors, connecting perhaps 6,000 people in the valley to large populations to the northeast and south. In choosing where to live, people used the natural landscape to their advantage and built a variety of dwellings. In earlier times pit houses, semi-subterranean homes were common. Later, small alcoves like those at Montezuma Well were walled off for dwellings and storage. Mesas and hilltops provided space for large pueblos like Tuzlgoot and farmers built informal structures near their fields for shelter during planting and harvest. Around 1300, the Verde Valley had at least 40 large villages, related dwellings, and farmlands, forming a complex settlement network. Much of this record of human activity is now lost to land development, erosion, and major flood events. The rebuilt pueblo at Tuzigoot National Monument and the dwellings at Montezuma Well were in use at the same time as the Castle. All were part of the Verde valley’s network of settlements around 1300 (CE).” ~ marker, Montezuma Castle, NM. <\/p>\n “Alcoves and Cavates: The abundant alcoves and rock shelters found in cliffs throughout the Verde Valley served as homes, storage units, and spiritual sites. Wind and water have sculpted countless alcoves, holes, and crannies in the soft layers of the Verde Formation limestone. People built homes in large alcoves and used smaller recesses for temporary shelter and storage. When people dug into a cliff and enlarged or modified the opening, they created what archaeologists call cavates. Most cavates are similar to one another, extending about 10 feet (3 m) into the cliff. Some contained both local and imported pottery sherds dating from 1150 to 1400. During the winter you can see one from here, about halfway up the cliff, downstream from Castle A, look closely for a masonry wall with a doorway. People living in these cavates must have shared a connection to one another and been yet another part of the Montezuma Castle neighborhood. In rock shelters and cavates, a masonry front wall enclosed living and storage spaces in niches off the front room. The floor was comprised of plaster on top of compacted earth or bedrock, which often had ridges to divide interior space – though some may have had wood and mud walls. A survey of a nearby cavate revealed the site was reused in more modern times. Archaeologists recovered a Yavapai or Western Apache basket and items left behind by early visitors and soldiers from nearby Fort Verde.” ~ marker at Montezuma Castle, NM.<\/p>\n “Growing a Livelihood: While many details of life in this settlement will never be fully known, it is clear that farming, craft, and trade thrived here. The space where you have been walking was a small part of the farmland cultivated by the people of Montezuma Castle. Crops provided more than food – the economy of the Castle community may have been based largely on trade and craft specialization, including cotton weaving. Textiles were important for everyday use, trade, and ceremonies so the demand for cotton was high. People also transplanted and cultivated agave to provide fibers for making strong twine used in ropes, nets, cords, bags, and sandals. Roasted agave hearts made a sweet food with calories equal to corn. Archaeological sites in the valley yield abundant fiber cordage and numerous stone knives for harvesting and processing agave. The plant is still important to the Yavapai and Apache cultures, and is celebrated in modern agave harvests and roasts.” ~ marker at Montezuma Castle, NM.<\/p>\n “On the Move: Around 1400 after centuries of settlement here, families began leaving their verde Valley homes. The archaeological record suggests that from 1350 to 1400, people began tl eave the valley and join larger pueblos to the north and east. They did not disappear, but may have left for a variety of reasons. What was it like to leave behind homes their families had occupied for generations? What caused them to depart this well-watered bountiful valley? Disease, conflict, depleted soils, and changing unpredictable weather patterns are all possibilities. Also trade networks that had been in place for many centuries appear to stop around this time, cutting off important social, cultural, and economic contacts. Perhaps there was the prospect of a better life in another place. Hopi say their ancestors purposefully settled and left villages like Montezuma Castle for a reason, one that involves fulfillment of a spiritual covenant. After centuries of making their homes and their lives in the Verde Valley, the people of these communities began migrating to new places, Many moved northeast. Large settlements like Chavez Pass and Homol’ovi as well as villages at the Hopi Mesas, were among the destinations for the people who left Montezuma Castle.” ~ marker at Montezuma Castle, NM.<\/p>\n “Kinship Ties: Memories, stories, and traditions continue to bind people today to this cultural heritage site. The community surrounding Montezuma Castle was one of related households – both familial and social units. The Hopi parrot, Bear, Water, Cloud, Bearstrap, Bluebird, and Spider clans all have oral histories about residing at Montezuma castle. These Hopi clans are related to one another and traveled together during long migrations. The Zuni say their ancestors migrated through here as well. Ancestral Yavapai bands likely had interactions with these groups. Ancestors of the O’odham people of southern Arizona traded here, while the Tonto Apache and yavapai consider nearby Montezuma Well their place of origin. The cultural connections to Montezuma Castle and other sites in the Verde Valley are rich and complex. Most indigenous peoples have long-held cultural restrictions against disturbing places inhabited by ancestors. ” ~ marker, Montezuma Castle, NM. Montezuma Castle, Arizona. Arizona to California: Walking withe the Ancestors – 2013 – en rout from Oregon south to California, west to New Mexico, back to California, then to Ireland. Sunday, November 24, 2013. Photography (c) 2013 Thomas Baurley, Eadaoin Bineid, Leaf McGowan, Technogypsie Productions. www.technogypsie.com\/photography\/. To follow the stories and tales visit http:\/\/www.technogypsie.com\/chronicles\/?p=6961. To learn more about Arizona: http:\/\/www.technogypsie.com\/reviews\/?p=11777. Montezuma Castle: Montezuma Castle National Monument* Camp Verde, Arizona * http:\/\/www.nps.gov\/moca\/index.htm * Thanks to the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt celebrated it by naming and declaring four National Monuments as having such historic and cultural significance, one of these was … Continue reading
* Camp Verde, Arizona * http:\/\/www.nps.gov\/moca\/index.htm<\/A> *<\/I><\/p>\n
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