The Basketmaker II Period in the Four Corners Area.

The Basketmaker II period is important. The archaeological remains of this period document the emergence of the Anasazi cultural tradition and a consolidation of the dependence on farming that shaped the tradition from then on. The Anasazi experience is a unique and valuable strand in human history, one worth studying and understanding for its own sake. It also can stand as one example of the general kinds of economic, demographic, and social changes that swept through most of the world after the end of the last Ice Age, as ancestral patterns of food collecting were replaced by food producing, and as populations grew, became more sedentary, and developed more complex social organizations. Because the archaeological record from the Four Corners area is so good, the Basketmaker II period can serve as a case study, or series of case studies, that can inform us about general issues in human prehistory, as well as about the roots of the Anasazi culture.Lipe, William D. 1993. The Basketmaker II Period in the Four Corners Area. In Anasazi Basketmaker: Papers from the 1990 Wetherill-Grand Gulch Symposium, edited by Victoria M. Atkins, pp. 1-10. Cultural Resource Series, No. 24, Bureau of Land Management, Salt Lake Cit