BADGER HOUSE
Community
Trail Guide
25¢
donation if you take book home.
BARNHART
Badger House Community Trail
- TRAILHEAD
- To Long House
- Basketmaker Pithouses
- Pueblo Village
- Mini-Train Pickup
- Badger House
- Mini-Train Pickup
- Two Raven House
- Mini-Train Pickup
- To Kodak & Long House Overlooks
- (Trail is accessible to the handicapped)
About Your Visit...
Welcome to Badger House Community. This group ofruins covers nearly seven acres. Your walk through thisarea is a journey through 600 years of prehistory....
About The Past...
Archeologists learn about past human behavior mostlythrough studying technology. As archeologists uncoversettlements of different ages, as here on Wetherill Mesa,they can compare patterns in architecture, tools, andvillage layout and note how these changed through time.From these things, archeologists can infer how societiesorganized to carry out the tasks of life and how theyreorganized when necessary to meet life’s challenges.
In their interpretations of the past, archeologists do notalways agree with one another. There is no reason whythey should. The evidence is always incomplete andoften difficult to understand....
About The People...
Archeologists call the prehistoric Indians of the MesaVerde “Anasazi.” Anasazi peoples once lived over a vastarea of the northern Southwest, from the Four Cornersto southern Nevada. The Anasazi were descended fromnomadic hunting and gathering peoples who occupiedthe Southwest several thousand years before the time ofChrist. Food plants, originally domesticated in Mexico,spread to the Southwest through trade. People werethen able to produce food as well as collect it. Althoughthe Anasazi raised crops of corn, beans, and squash,such foods probably made up only about half their diet.3The people still relied on the hunting and gathering skillspassed down from their ancestors. The Pueblo Indians ofArizona and New Mexico are the descendants of theAnasazi. Despite four centuries of contact—andsometimes conflict—with European culture, today’sPueblos carry on much of the way of life the Anasazideveloped over the centuries. The Anasazi heritage liveson.
Living in the Ground:
Modified Basketmaker Pithouse (AD 650)
By the late 500s, the Anasazi had settled on various partsof the Mesa Verde. The people lived in p