Basketmaker III Sites

Basketmaker III. The Basketmaker III Period (ca A.D 400 – 700) represents a definite material advance over Basketmaker II. Farming was a more firmly established, with the bean now being a part of the Anasazi crop complex. Basketmaker III sites were larger. In the Quemado region, for instance, estimates indicate that two Basketmaker III villages embraced over 50 pithouses apiece.

Basketmaker III pithouses were improvements over their type II prototypes, and ceremonial chambers, or kivas, were constructed in the villages, and pottery made its first appearance. The pottery was made by coiling and was usually fired to a gray-white color. A plain type, known as Lino Gray, is diagnostic of the period, as are the associated Lino Black-on-Gray and La Plata Black-on-white types.

Decoration was usually confined to the interiors of open bowls, and designs took the form of rectalinear elements of triangles, steps, panels, and zigzags. Some authorities see a resemblance between these designs and the designs that were painted on coiled basketry of the preceding Basketmaker II Period.

An additional decorative element on Basketmaker III pottery was an impermanent, fugitive red pigment applied after firing. In addition to pottery, other Basketmaker III innovations included the fully open-ended trough metate as a household feature and, toward the end of the period, the bow-and-arrow, the poloshed grooved axe, cotton cloth, and the domesticated turkey.

The village of Shabik`eshchee in Chaco region of New Mexico is one of the best known and most thoroughly excavated Basketmaker III sites. A total of pit-dwellings, a large kiva, a courtyard, 48 storage bins, and two refuse heaps compose the ruins.

The Shabik`eshchee houses average  between 60 and 90 of a meter in depth and vary in diameter from slightly over 3 to almost 7 meters. They are circular, oval and rectangular in outline, and the chronology of the site indicates that the rectangular form grew increasingly popular. The sides of the excavated walls of the pithouses had been either lined with large stone slabs or coated with mud plaster. The roofs were supported by four posts set in the floor at some distance from the corners, or approximate corners, of the pits. Presumably, cross beams topped these four posts, and these cross beams were covered with the poles of a flat roof.

The upper walls of the house were formed by leaning poles and sticks from the cross beams to the ground surface outside the pit excavation. The houses were entered through semisubterranean passages which were usually located on the south or southeast side. Some of these passages terminated in small semi-subterranean ante-chambers. Within the main chamber was a centrally located fire basin, and these basins were screened against the rush of cold air from the entrance passage by upright stone slab deflectors. Near the fire basin was a small circular hole in the prepared floor, through to be, by analogy with present-day Pueblo Kivas, the sipapu, or the mythical place where ancestors emerged from the underworld to the surface of the earth.

Although bin-like compartments of stone slabs were placed along the interior walls of some of the houses, the principal storage facilities seem to have been the outside bins. They were made like the pithouses, although smaller, being circular, about 1.50 meter in diameter, and less than 1 meter in depth. They were usually lined with stone slabs or mud plaster and were covered with conical or dome-shaped roofs of poles, wattle, and daub. Presumably, entry was gained through these roofs.

The kiva at Shabik`eshchee was a circular pitstructure, a little over 12 meters in diameter. Its walls were carefully faced with stone slabs, and a low encircling bench had been built up around the interior base of the wall with smaller facing slabs and rock and adobe fill. The roof was supported, as in the houses, by four corner posts. There was no side entrance, only a side ventilating shaft; apparently the kive was entered through the smoke-hole in the roof. The fire basin was centrally located and protected from the currents of the ventilating shaft by a deflecting stone.

The courtyard was not a central plaza or formally arranged feature but a stone-outlined and paved area covered with plaster which abutted against a row of four storage bins. It was slightly less than 6 by 3 meters in extent. Two fire basins were in the courtyard and two metates were found within it, which led Roberts to surmise thet it was used as an outdoor eating and cooking place.

Only fourteen burials were found in general village area at Shabik`eshchee. Abandoned bins had not been used as tombs. The standart position of the body was flexed, on the back, head to west, and face to north. Only three graves contained mortuary offerings, although perishable items such as basketry probably had been placed in others.