A Summary of 25 Years of Research on Water Supplies of the Ancestral Pueblo People

Six ancestral Pueblo community water supply sources were investigated by a team of engineers, scientists, archeologists, and other specialists affiliated with Wright Water Engineers, Inc. (WWE), and the Wright Paleohydrological Institute (WPI) from 1996 to 2021. The team members applied their various technical backgrounds and research methods to gain more insight into the water available to the ancestral Pueblo people living in the Four Corners area of the United States between 750 and 1280 CE, and how these indigenous people managed the water. Using lab analyses, field research, surveys, and analyses of sediment layers, the WWE/WPI team determined that four mounded areas discovered at Mesa Verde National Park had been ancestral Pueblo reservoirs. Through climate research, lab analyses, and investigations at these and two other sites, the team learned that water in this region was limited, and the community had to work diligently to harvest this water and maintain access to it. In the case of the four reservoirs studied, for example, the runoff used as water supply carried a high volume of sediment that required the water storage basins to be frequently dredged to maintain adequate capacity. These and other examples indicate that the ancestral Pueblo people were resourceful, hardworking, and organized water harvesters.