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Prologue: The previous diary posted on the Human History of the Colorado Plateau (http://www.dailykos.com/...) as well as an Archeological Timeline diary (http://www.dailykos.com/...) denote an abridged account of the Ancestral Puebloan culture (including their Puebloan successors). What follows in this two-part series is therefore a more complete background...a cultural survey of sort...and presented mainly because so many Dkos community readers posed interesting questions concerning the long-standing cultural practices and achievements of Ancestral Puebloans over time.
Let it also be stated from the outset how any information about key ceremonies, including anything associated with religious practices, are not divulged in this two-part diary series. About the only thing any of us, as outsiders, are likely to discover is what modern day Puebloans are willing to share about their culture and their ancestors. Ergo, there will always remain exclusive information that is not dispersed, and for obvious reasons. What follows is also another timeline rendition of a culture that did not cease when the Ancestral Puebloans vacated their homeland sometime around the late 13th Century (that is, the majority of these people departed and left most of their possessions behind). This great diaspora took the Ancestral Puebloans south and east off the Colorado Plateau, where most of the various communities reestablished their culture, and later became known as the Puebloans. Each sovereign Puebloan Nation took a distinct name applied to their village locales that were established throughout parts of New Mexico (including one Puebloan village in Texas, as well as the Hopi people, who remained in their long established Hopi Mesa country, in Arizona. Thus names like the Taos Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, Zia Pueblo, and so on that accounts for all twenty-one Puebloan tribal sects.
