mp anduncomfortable, fires probably burned throughout the village. Smoke blackenedwalls and ceiling are reminders of the biting cold these people lived with for half ofevery year. Clothing closely followed the seasons. In summer, the adults wore simpleloincloths and sandals. in winter, they dressed in hides and skins and wrappedthemselves against the cold in blankets made of turkey feathers and robes ofrabbit fur. Getting food was a ceaseless struggle, even in the best of years. Farmingwas the main business of these people, but they supplemented their crops of corn,beans, and squash by gathering wild plants and hunting deer, rabbits, squirrels, andother game. Their only domestic animals were dogs and turkeys.Fortunately for us, the Anasazi tossed their trash close by. Scraps of food,broken pottery and tools, anything unwanted went down the slope in front of theirhouses. Much of what we know about daily life here comes from these garbageheaps. The Anasazi were a stone-age people, without metal of any kind. Theyskillfully shaped stone, bone, and wood into a variety of tools for grinding, cutting,pounding, chopping, perforating, scraping, polishing and weaving. They used thedigging stick for farming, the stone ax for clearing, the bow and arrow for hunting,and sharp-edged stones for cutting. They ground corn with the metate and manoand made wooden spindle whorls for weaving. From bone they fashioned awls forsewing and scrapers for working hides. They usually made their stone tools fromstream cobbles rather than the soft sandstone of the cliffs.The structure of the Anasazi life is difficult to know. Archeology hasyielded some information, but without written documentation, there is not way tobe sure about their social, political, or religious ideas. We must rely on the insighton comparisons with modern Pueblo people of New Mexico and Arizona. In classictimes at Mesa Verde, several generations probably lived together as a h...
