@brighamofutah: This chunk of painted plaster was excavated from a kiva in southwestern Colorado dating to the early 7th century. The site it is from is known as the Knobby Knee Stockade, which was an early village of the Ancestral Puebloan culture (aka the Anasazi) which went on to build the monumental structures at Mesa Verde National Park and Chaco Canyon National Historic Park. The village had notably strong defensive features and is not believed to have been inhabited for a very long period of time. Around the time it was inhabited, early Islamic armies were conquering much of the Middle East on the other side of the world, and the Tang Dynasty was beginning its 300-year rule in China. Although much of it has worn away, the exteriors of buildings like those as Mesa Verde and Chaco were once covered in smooth white or tan-colored plaster, and inside many of the rooms, plaster walls were painted with geometric designs. #archaeology #ancientart #nativeamericanart #coloradoadventures #anthropology
