Sacrificial caves, pueblos, cliff-dwellings, and graves have yielded vast numbers of artifacts illustrating the ancient life and culture of the early peoples and have been of prime importance in determining chronological sequence. Taken as a whole the pot tery (made without the wheel, of course) exceeds that of any other area north of central Mexico in grace of form, variety, range and execution of decoration, and, of the later periods, in colour. There were two periods during which the decoration was in glaze. On early vessels from the Mimbres valley, New Mexico, are well executed representations of zoomorphic and other forms, and the pottery of the later polychrome period is often beauti fully embellished with realistic as well as conventionalized figures of birds, feathers, and other motives in great variety. Effigy ves sels are common to many localities and to various periods. The excellent basketry of the earliest stages of culture gave way largely to earthenware after the adoption of corn-raising and sedentary life became firmly established. The throwing-stick, or atlatl, early superseded by bow and arrow, has been mentioned. Netted and woven articles of wild vegetable fibres, and fabrics of remarkable beauty sometimes interwoven with feathers after the early intro duction and cultivation of cotton, exhibit the facility of the ancient inhabitants in the textile art. Stone slabs and vessels for prepar ing or containing paints and medicines are sometimes well finished and embellished in relief with effigies of birds, animals, serpents, and frogs; but sculpture generally was inferior to that of the Mississippi Valley tribes, the Pueblo hunting fetishes representing prey animals not equalling the remarkable effigy pipes from Ohio mounds. The most ambitious effort of Pueblo sculptors of old is shown in the partly destroyed crouching mountain-lions carved life-size in rock-in-place near Cochiti pueblo in the Rio Grande valley. Petroglyphs are abundant, but nowhere do they exhibit any degree of aesthetic advancement or any approach to a glyphic system. Obsidian, jasper, and chalcedony are among the native substances used for chipping arrow- and spear-points, knives, scrapers, and drill-points. Turquoise mined in the Cerrillos near Santa Fe and in other localities in New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, was made into various ornaments, including mosaic brooches, pendants, ear-ornaments, hair-combs, and rings, and into beads so finely drilled with the pump-drill that the process of perforating them is a mystery. Axes and hammers both singly and doubly grooved are common throughout the area; arrowshaft straighteners and smoothers are often excellently made ; metates and manos of varying degrees of coarseness for grinding corn, and mortars and slabs for pounding and grinding foods and paint are found among the remains of many households. The stone gouge, celt, and chisel, usual to other localities, are absent ; but gouges, chisels, awls, punches, spatulas, knives, flakers, weaving imple ments, and various other tools of bone or of antler are common. Slightly tapering tobacco pipes, usually quite plain, are character istically Pueblo; others, used as "cloud-blowers," are sometimes perfectly cylindrical. Cane cigarettes have been found in sacri ficial caves by thousands. There is no evidence that the people of the arid region possessed any knowledge of metal-working, the copper bells found there being doubtless of Mexican origin.
Burial customs varied more or less with the locality. In some places the remains were deposited in talus, in others cemeteries were provided, and often interment was made beneath the floors of dwellings. In the Gila drainage of Arizona both house burial and cremation were practised, and cremation found its way at least as far as ancient Zufii. Very frequently the personal belong ings of the departed were deposited with his remains, and rich indeed have been the mortuary objects found in some graves.
As in prehistoric times the Pueblo tribes have been reduced in number of villages and in population since they first became known to the Spaniards in 1540 ; but the linguistic families seem to be the same today as then—Zurii, Hopi, Tanoan (Tigua, Tewa, Jemez), Keres—and there is no reason to suppose that there was any notable linguistic change for a long time before the beginning of the historic period. In addition to the Pueblos other sedentary Indians still inhabit the arid region—Pima, Papago, Maricopa, and several tribes of the Yuman family within the drainage area of the Colorado river—but these are in no way comparable with the Pueblos. The non-village Indians are the Ute, Paiute, Navaho, and several Apache bands, but there is reason to believe that the Athapascan Navaho and Apache did not enter New Mexico and Arizona until after the Spanish advent.