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Excavation of the Tusayan ruin was conducted in i930 under the direction of Harold S. Gladwin and the staff of the Gila Pueblo of Globe, Arizona. They named it Tusayan following the Spanish nomenclature for the district; the exact meaning of. the word Tusayan is lost to us. The museum was established to interpret, the partially-excavated ruin. The ruin is unique in that no attempt was made at reconstruction, and portions of the ruin were deliberately left unexcavated-standard procedure today, but unheard of in 1930. The site represents the westernmost extension of the Kayenta Anasazi. It is one of the most heavily visited archeological sites in the National Park System.
Who were the Anasazi? They were the prehistoric peoples of the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, known for their pueblos and cliff dwellings, and the pottery, tools, and decorative items they produced. They occupied this region for about 1300 years. Impressive evidence that these ancient people were the ancestors of today's Pueblo peoples leads present day archeologists to call them the \"ancestral Pueblo."
The ancestral Pueblo first appear in the archeological record of the Southwest around the year AD 1. At that time they lived in pit houses, and the beautiful baskets they left behind led archeologists to use the term.\" Basket maker\" to describe these people and the time period from AD 500 to AD 700. Around AD 700, as they became more dependent upon agriculture, they began to construct stone pueblos to satisfy their need for permanent settlements. Archeologists classify this later period as \"Pueblo."
Compulsive builders, the ancestral Pueblo worked without cranes, bulldozers or trucks. Their masonry varied from crude shelters to magnificent multistory structures. Sites range in size from small multifamily units to villages and towns, located just about anywhere they could lay a few stones.
The largest concentration of ancestral Pueblo population was in what is now Montezuma Valley in south-western Colorado and southern Utah. This is the site we now know as Yellow- jacket, the remains of one of the largest cities of the ancestral Pueblo world. With an estimated population of 3,600 people, it boasted four plazas, twenty towers, 1,826 rooms, 166 kivas, streets with north-south alignment, and a reservoir with spillway. Chaco Canyon, in north-western New Mexico, served as a trade and distribution center for goods ranging from California abalone to Mexican parrots. Roads 25 to 40 feet (7-12 meters) wide, and 40 to 60 miles (65-100 kilometers) long radiated from Chaco.
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