Anasazi Mesa Verde c. 1100-1275 A.D.

Located in the southwestern corner of Colorado , at Mesa Verde National Park , are preserved many spectacular Anasazi cliff dwellings from the period A.D. 1100 to 1275. One of these, Cliff Palace , had plazas, 220 rooms in buildings up to three stories, 23 Kivas, and ceremonial towers. The buildings are located below limestone cliffs in clusters resembling an apartment-like town. Within the complex there lies a most advanced system of building types, special-use rooms, construction methods, and road and water management systems. These buildings were constructed with available materials of earth and stone and are the beginning of an ideal urban settlement establishing equilibrium between home and the surroundings in the desert. The Anasazi formerly lived in pit-houses dug into the earth. Around the 7th c. A.D. they started to live for part of the year in unit like structures constructed of sandstone rock set in masonry.

These structures lacked windows and doors and were often roofed like pit-houses. The units were joined so that they often shared walls and were arranged in a linear fashion allowing the formation of interior plazas, usually with their rear wall facing the prevailing northerly winds or backed up against a cliff. The front façade of the building faced south allowing the earth walls to soak up radiant energy from the sun later released to the interior at night allowing a comfortable inner temperature in the dwelling units. In the coldest winter months, a relatively small and smokeless fire kept the units warm. The arrangement of units is nestled under the protective cover of an undercut cliff. The cliff provides shelter from rain as well as harsh summer sun when it is high in the sky. In the winter months, when the sun is lower, the cliff allows the sun full access to the undercutting thus allowing the units to be heated by way of passive solar radiation.