Cliff dwellings rising at Mesa Verde

1100

On the green plateau of the Four Corners, Ancestral Pueblo masons began working sandstone blocks into multi-room houses tucked under the lips of vast sandstone alcoves. The architecture answered both a colder century and a more violent one; the high dwellings were defensible. Some alcoves sheltered communities of two hundred or more, with kivas carved into the bedrock floors and granaries sealed with clay to store years of maize.