Ancient Sinagua Designs

I had an opportunity to visit ancient Sinagua Indian cliff dwellings today at two different sites in north central Arizona.  Our first stop was Montezuma's Castle. It's interesting to note that though Montezuma was never known to travel this far north, the area was given the name by early discoverers. The Sinaguan building ruins are spectacular and built very high into the stone terraces. They can only be seen from a distance. 

The visitor's center displays a number preserved artifacts including stone tools, grass weavings, pottery and textiles.  This decorative arrowhead (?) shape was made with turquoise inlayed over wood, 1100-1400 A.D.

Our next stop was Walnut Canyon, north of Flagstaff.  Here we were able to take a short but steep hike directly to the building ruins. The rock walls of the dwellings are still blackened by smoke from cooking fires. There are a fair number of separate cliff dwellings and you can look out across the small canyon and see more on the other side of the chasm. What an amazing experience!...just like looking out across an ancient high rise apartment complex.