The two-hundred-fifty-year
period subsequent to A.D. 900 is known as Pueblo II. The tendency toward
aggregation evidenced in Pueblo I sites reversed itself in this period,
as the people dispersed themselves widely over the land in thousands
of small stone houses. During Pueblo II, good stone masonry replaced
the pole-and-adobe architecture of Pueblo I, the surface rooms became
year-round habitations, and the pithouses (now completely subterranean)
probably assumed the largely ceremonial role of the pueblo kiva. It
was during this period that small cliff granaries became popular. The
house style known as the unit pueblo, which had its beginning during
the previous period, became the universal settlement form during this
period. In the unit pueblo the main house is a block of rectangular
living and storage rooms located on the surface immediately north or
northwest of an underground kiva; immediately southeast of this is a
trash and ash dump or midden.
The redware pottery
industry continued to flourish, as a fine, red-slipped ware with black
designs was traded throughout much of the Colorado Plateau. During the
middle-to-late Pueblo II period, however, the redware tradition ended
in the country north of the San Juan River, although it blossomed in
the area south of the river. Virtually all of the red or orange pottery
found in San Juan County sites postdating A.D. 1000 was made south of
the San Juan River around Navajo Mountain in the Kayenta Anasazi country.
The reasons for this shift are unknown, and the problem is a fascinating
one. Production and refinement of the black-on-white and the gray (now
decorated by indented corrugation) wares continued uninterrupted in
both areas, but the redware tradition migrated across what appears to
have been an ethnic boundary.
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