Exploring Tsankawi Ruin: Clues to an ancient culture found on New Mexico’s Parajito Plateau

Exploring Tsankawi Ruin: Clues to an ancient culture found on New Mexico’s Parajito Plateau

Women from San Juan Pueblo talk at a sand wash in this photo by Edward Sheriff Curtis. Adolph Bandelier’s book The Delight Makers (1890) is an important novel about Pueblo village life and strife in northern New Mexico.
Edward Sheriff Curtis photographed Ambrosio Martinez, a respected San Juan Pueblo elder, whose family may have helped Adolph Bandelier in his study of the ancestral Puebloan past.
Aivowitsia, a Cochiti village woman, holds a stunning ceramic pot in this photo by Edward Sheriff Curtis. Adolph Bandelier learned about ancestral Puebloan Indians by talking with families at Cochiti and San Juan communities.
San Juan Pueblo women wash wheat in baskets in this photo by Edward Sheriff Curtis. Adolph Bandelier’s research enabled him to write an important book on Pueblo life, and he may have witnessed scenes like this one.
An entrance to a cave room appears on the cliff side at Tsankawi Ruin, which is an outlier of the larger Tyunyi Ruin in Frijoles Canyon.
The cave rooms built into the cliffs at Tsankawi reflect ancient habitation sites.
An entrance to a cave room appears on the cliff side at Tsankawi Ruin, which is an outlier of the larger Tyunyi Ruin in Frijoles Canyon.
Unique to Bandelier National Monument and prominent at Tsankawi Ruin are deeply etched routes or trails in the sparkling white rock.
The cliffs display numerous prehistoric and historic Pueblo rock art designs and symbols including deeply etched spiral motifs.
Native residents made frequent use of sharp obsidian arrowheads, knives and axes. This fragment of an arrowhead was found below a rock art panel and promptly re-buried on the spot.
This rare cave room at Tsankawi Ruin has its original paint and plaster. A National Park Service sign prohibits entrance to the room to save the ancient wall decorations.

Exploring Tsankawi Ruin: Clues to an ancient culture found on New Mexico’s Parajito Plateau

Women from San Juan Pueblo talk at a sand wash in this photo by Edward Sheriff Curtis. Adolph Bandelier’s book The Delight Makers (1890) is an important novel about Pueblo village life and strife in northern New Mexico.
Edward Sheriff Curtis photographed Ambrosio Martinez, a respected San Juan Pueblo elder, whose family may have helped Adolph Bandelier in his study of the ancestral Puebloan past.
Aivowitsia, a Cochiti village woman, holds a stunning ceramic pot in this photo by Edward Sheriff Curtis. Adolph Bandelier learned about ancestral Puebloan Indians by talking with families at Cochiti and San Juan communities.
San Juan Pueblo women wash wheat in baskets in this photo by Edward Sheriff Curtis. Adolph Bandelier’s research enabled him to write an important book on Pueblo life, and he may have witnessed scenes like this one.
An entrance to a cave room appears on the cliff side at Tsankawi Ruin, which is an outlier of the larger Tyunyi Ruin in Frijoles Canyon.
The cave rooms built into the cliffs at Tsankawi reflect ancient habitation sites.
An entrance to a cave room appears on the cliff side at Tsankawi Ruin, which is an outlier of the larger Tyunyi Ruin in Frijoles Canyon.
Unique to Bandelier National Monument and prominent at Tsankawi Ruin are deeply etched routes or trails in the sparkling white rock.
The cliffs display numerous prehistoric and historic Pueblo rock art designs and symbols including deeply etched spiral motifs.
Native residents made frequent use of sharp obsidian arrowheads, knives and axes. This fragment of an arrowhead was found below a rock art panel and promptly re-buried on the spot.
This rare cave room at Tsankawi Ruin has its original paint and plaster. A National Park Service sign prohibits entrance to the room to save the ancient wall decorations.