A sudden shift into the cliffs
For over 700 years, from about 550 CE, Ancestral Pueblo people farmed and lived on the flat tops of Mesa Verde. They constructed villages centered around pithouses and later built complex masonry pueblos. Then, in a relatively short period starting in the late 1190s, a massive architectural change occurred. Families began moving into natural alcoves in the canyon walls, constructing the cliff dwellings. More than 600 of these structures were built, ranging from small, single-room storage units to large villages.
The largest of these, Cliff Palace, contains 150 rooms and 23 circular, subterranean chambers called kivas. It likely housed around 100 people. These structures were not simple hideouts; they were complex architectural achievements built from shaped sandstone blocks, wooden beams, and a mortar of soil, water, and ash. This move into the cliffs was a major societal shift, concentrating the population into defensible and difficult-to-access communities. By 1285, almost everyone in the region lived in these cliff-side villages.