An Evolving Village

An Evolving Village. . From a few rooms on the hilltop to a 110-room pueblo, this dwelling transformed over centuries as increasing numbers of people came together to form a community., The pueblo you see today was not built all at once or with a plan, but instead developed over centuries. As the population increased, people changed the size, layout, and functions of the rooms. Here, people built a unit of rooms separate from the main pueblo. This created an open plaza area (to your left) during the final years of construction in the late 1300s. A public space would have become important as the village grew larger, for the same reasons as today to conduct social, economic, political, and ceremonial activities., Unlike pueblos to the north on the Colorado Plateau, few rooms at Tuzigoot were used solely for storage. Almost every room floor had a fire hearth, indicating a living space. The larger rooms at Tuzigoot may have met a need for both living and storage space., Captions , Tuzigoot is part of what archeologists have called the Southern Sinagua culture area, after the Spanish name for the San Francisco Peaks - la sierra sin agua - to the north. Undecorated pottery, fine textiles, and elaborate jewelry are some of the characteristics of Sinagua culture. , Archeologists have used several techniques to reveal the order in which Tuzigoot's rooms may have been built. Artifacts, tree ring dating, walls built on top of one another, and the locations of trash deposits are all clues to the approximate building sequence, shown here.