Cliff Dwellers, Salado

The cliff dwelling Native Americans of the Southwest from the early centuries of the previous millennium are documented well enough to be part of our national consciousness.  But there is an extra buzz of walking into one of the cliff towns.  It is a town even though there were fewer than 70 people at the height of its population.

The studies of these dwellings go on all the time and our body of knowledge grows.  We know a lot about the size of their villages, what they ate, what skills they had.  There are speculations about their customs, about how they chose their sites, and why they abandoned them.

Legions of graduate students have spent centuries of people-hours excavating ruins, sorting through dump sites, and boring into mounds with soft-hair brushes.  None has come up with the most obvious reason for site selection.  I’d live there for the VIEW.