Visit Pithouses and Pueblos, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

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Here you will find the remnants of an evolving village and the beginnings of a new style of home. The original village was composed of both pithouses and above-ground rooms made of jacal—a wooden lattice plastered with mud with large stone slabs supporting the base. Later generations built single-stone-wide masonary walls. This innovation allowed for bigger rooms and larger villages.When families started living in these above-ground room blocks, they continued to build pithouse-like structures nearby. Dug deeper into the ground, the pithouse began to resemble a kiva. Kivas are multi-purpose underground rooms that remain central to Pueblo community life today. A flat, ground-level roof of latticed beams covered the kiva. As with a pithouse, an opening in the roof provided entry via a ladder.Architectural and technological innovations occurred hand-in-hand. Plain grayware ceramics were replaced by painted black-on-white pottery and stronger corrugated vessels that could be set in fires for cooking. Paved, level trails about 50 to 150 yards (46 to 137 m) long to three excavated sites.

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