The Pueblo I Era, from CE 750 to 900, is the first period in which Ancient Pueblo People begin living in pueblo structures and realize an evolution in architecture, artistic expression, and water conservation.

Pueblo I, a Pecos Classification, is similar to the early "Developmental Pueblo Period" of CE 750 to 1100.

People construct and live in pueblos, which are surface level, flat-roofed homes.

At the beginning of the period pueblos are made with jacal construction.

Wooden posts are used to create a frame to supported woven material and a covering of mud.

Later in the period, stone slabs will sometimes used around the dwelling foundation.

The pueblos are made of several rooms that form a straight row or in a crescent shape.

Sometimes they build the dwellings two rows thick with a combination of living rooms with fire pits and storage rooms.

The Pueblo I villages are larger than the settlements of the preceding Basket Maker period; In the Four Corners region the average of five to ten pit-house per settlement rises to twenty to thirty pit-houses per community.

In some cases, the Pueblo I communities are quite large.

Southeastern Utah's Alkali Ridge has about one hundred and thirty rooms built on the surface, with sixteen pit-houses and two kivas.

The Pueblo and Mogollón cultures have settled in separate areas of central New Mexico by about 800.

The “Basket Makers” of southwestern Colorado merge with the “ancient ones,” or Anasazi, by 800.

Gulf and Western North America (820 – 963 CE): Mound-Builders, Chaco Flourishing, and California’s Canoe Chiefs

Geographic and Environmental Context

Gulf and Western North America includes: Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, nearly all of California (except far northwest), Florida (except the Jacksonville corridor), southwestern Georgia, most of Alabama (except Huntsville corner), southwestern Tennessee, southern Illinois (Little Egypt), southwestern Missouri, most of Nebraska (except northeast around Omaha), southeastern South Dakota, southern Montana, southern Idaho, southeastern Oregon.

• Anchors: Lower Mississippi towns (Plaquemine precursors), Natchez bluffs, Gulf fisheries (Calusa, Pensacola), Southern Plains nodes (early Spiro), Chaco Canyon great houses, Hohokam canals in Salt–Gila basin, Mogollon Rim, Great Basin foragers, California coast (Chumash Channel Islands, Sacramento–San Joaquin wetlands).

Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Benefited from the Medieval Warm Period: ample rainfall on the Mississippi bottomlands, supporting maize expansion; drought cycles more subdued than in later centuries.

• Southwest: ideal for canal irrigation and Chaco aggregation.

• California: steady oak acorn harvests and rich marine productivity.

Societies and Political Developments

• Mississippian precursors: maize cultivation expanded; Plaquemine and Caddoan mound centers rose in the lower Mississippi.

• Southern Plains: early mound activity at Spiro foreshadowed its later role.

• Southwest: Chaco Canyon reached its zenith, with great houses, roads, and ritual centers (850–1130).

• Hohokam irrigated villages flourished, cultivating maize, cotton, beans.

• Mogollon and Sinagua villages dotted uplands.

• California: Chumash chiefdoms expanded; tomol plank canoes connected Channel Islands to mainland.

• Great Basin: highly mobile foragers harvested seeds, hunted rabbits, and traded obsidian.

Economy and Trade

• Maize surpluses redistributed at mound centers.

• Chaco trade: turquoise, macaws, copper bells from Mesoamerica.

• Hohokam cotton & shells exported widely.

• Chumash shell beads spread along Pacific.

• Great Basin obsidian and salt linked desert to Puebloan centers.

Belief and Symbolism

• Mound cosmologies tied earth/sky/underworld.

• Chaco ritual kivas, astronomical alignments structured calendars.

• Chumash cosmology tied celestial navigation to canoe exchange.

Long-Term Significance

By 963, the region contained Mississippian precursors, Chaco’s great houses, Hohokam canals, and Chumash maritime chiefdoms, forming a continental crossroads of exchange and ritual.

The Ancient Pueblo population—the "Anasazi", from a Ute term adopted by the Navajo denoting the "ancient ones" or "enemy ancestors"—had rapidly expanded by 850: groups resided in larger, denser pueblos.

Strong evidence attests to a canyon-wide turquoise processing and trading industry dating from the tenth century.

Around this time, the first section of Pueblo Bonito is built: a curved row of fifty rooms near its present north wall.

Native beadwork has continued to advance.

Beads are made from hand-ground and filled turquoise, coral, and shell.

Carved wood, animal bones, claws, and teeth are made into beads, which are then sewn onto clothing, or strung into necklaces.

Turquoise is one of the dominant materials of Southwestern Native American jewelry.

Thousands of pieces will be found in the Ancestral Pueblo sites at Chaco Canyon.

Some turquoise mines date back to Precolumbian times, and Ancestral Pueblo peoples trades the turquoise with Middle Americans.

Some turquoise found in southern Arizona dates back to 200 BCE.