ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief sketch of the development of Pueblo architecture that outlines two commonly known descriptions and interpretations: the sequence of architectural forms in the Pueblo Southwest; a summary of different viewpoints that have been used in explaining or interpreting them. It explores a few questions about why architects need to understand this architecture. The builders and dwellers of Pueblo villages in northeastern Arizona and northern and western New Mexico are descendants of groups of people who have farmed, gathered produce, and hunted over a wide area of the southwestern United States for at least thirteen centuries. Architecture and settlement organization are inextricably bound with the material, nutritional, and spiritual cycles and resources of the landscape. Knowledge of environmental and climatic variables is critical to long term survival in southwestern landscapes. The myths described the emergence from the lower world and the early travels of the first people and their guidance by supernatural beings.
