This book is a shortened and updated version of the doctoral dissertation that was completed and defended by the author in 2009. The main objective of the book is to examine cultural situation in the thirteenth century A.D. in the central portion of the Mesa Verde region, located in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, and analyze selected sites from the area in terms of location and architectural features that may suggest that these settlements were constructed for defensive purposes. The central Mesa Verde region is well known to archaeologists and many tourists because of the famous cliff dwellings in the alcoves of the sandstone canyons of Mesa Verde National Park. These ancient Puebloan villages were constructed and inhabited mostly during the late Pueblo III period (ca. 1225–1300 A.D.); however, Ancestral Puebloan occupation of the area began many centuries before, in the first millennium B.C. (Charles 2006; Cordell 1997; Lipe 1999b). The late Pueblo III period was a time of many changes and reorganization in the ancient Pueblo world that are apparent in both the remaining architecture and the artifact assemblages in the Mesa Verde region. Socio-cultural changes probably occurred as well. The late Pueblo III period was a time of peak population in the region and, near the end of the thirteenth century A.D., of final depopulation and emigrations from the area.

This book consists of six chapters. The first is an introductory chapter that presents the objectives and scope of the book.