after Ortiz (1969) and Stubbs (1950)
URBAN GENESIS AT CHACO: Case Study of the Origin of Civilizations. Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6
The plaza, house-block, and kiva are the three basic formal elements of every Pueblo village. This core settlement is situated in a clearing of bare ground, or on the edge of a mesa or river. Immediately beyond the clearing were gardens designed for the intensive cultivation of beans, squash, and peppers. Before becoming integrated into the American economy, the staple diet of the Pueblo consisted of beans, squash, and maize; the former grown in the nearby gardens, the latter planted in more distant fields. This staple diet was supplemented by game and piñon nuts, which were hunted and gathered from the local forests and hills. Pueblos also walked considerable distances to gather medicinal herbs, sacred water and shells: the Hopi and Zuñi made pilgrimages to the San Francisco Mountains, the Gulf of California, and even the Pacific Ocean.
The intensity and manner in which the Pueblo use the space around their settlement is essentially concentric. In the Zuñi Atlas (1985), Ferguson and Hart delineated a series of increasingly large areas, classified by use: the core area of settlement, the agricultural area, the grazing area, the hunting area, the plant collection area, the mineral collection area, and the religious use area (Ferguson and Hart 1985:35-51). This last category is by far the largest:
A sample of water from the great ocean helped to attract clouds to the Zuñis periodically parched land. So it was that the Zuñis made pilgrimages to the Pacific Ocean, not only to trade for shells, coral, and other exotic goods, but also to obtain water from the shores of the great sea, samples of which were sealed in vessels and taken back to Zuñi Pueblo. (Ferguson and Hart 1985:55)
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