Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado; Canyon de Chelly, Arizona; Bandelier, New Mexico; Chaco Canyon, New Mexico — American Southwest, United States of America
The cliff dwellings of the American Southwest are the architectural achievement of the Ancestral Pueblo people, who built multi-storey stone communities into the vertical faces of canyon walls and under the overhanging ledges of sandstone mesas between approximately 1100 and 1300 CE. Mesa Verde's Cliff Palace, with its 150 rooms and 23 kivas, is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. These were not refuges or temporary shelters. They were planned, permanent communities with sophisticated water management, specialised ritual spaces, astronomical alignments, and long-distance trade connections stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast. Their builders did not vanish. They are the ancestors of the modern Pueblo peoples of New Mexico and Arizona.
Occupation approximately 550 CE to 1300 CE; cliff dwelling construction primarily 1100 to 1300 CE; Mesa Verde inscribed UNESCO 1978; Chaco Culture UNESCO 1987; Pueblo peoples maintain living cultural connection to present
