Hello and welcome to a history of the United States. Episode 66, Native American

6, the Southwest 2. Remember that this is a listener's supported podcast. If you want to support

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In our last episode, we began our more detailed survey of the Native American tribes with the southwest, taking the region up to the dawn of the classical period. This is where we begin today.

While the features we discussed last week, such as farming, pottery making and semi-permanent hamlets, were present in the South West,

it was in the period after the year 500 that they really began to spread around the region.

Each locality started to adapt its practices,

and very soon, the region had a mixture of different cultural traditions.

This would have had very important effects on the societies we are talking about.

Societies became more complex,

and with them, status became more important. But, as is frequently an issue with archaeology,

we have great difficulty in working out what the specifics of these complexities were.

We know that different cultural traditions existed, but did these people all identify as different

peoples, or did they think they were one nation, but they just lived in different settlement patterns?

These are questions we will never know the answers to.

So, what were these traditions?

Well, there were a number of numerous smaller traditions, such as the Patayan or the Sin Agua, but there were three of importance.

...