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Casa Malpaís Site
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The Kiva
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| Nearest city: | Springerville, Arizona |
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| Built: | 1250 |
| Governing body: | State |
| NRHP Reference#: | 66000936 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP: | October 15, 1966[1] |
| Designated NHL: | July 19, 1964[2] |
Casa Malpaís is an ancient pueblo people archaeological site located near the town of Springerville, Arizona. The site is a nationally recognized archaeological site[3] and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.[2][4]
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Casa Malpaís was built around 1260 A.D. and was inhabited until about 1400 A.D., meaning that the site dates from the Pueblo III to the Pueblo IV Era [2]. It is one of the latest dated Mogollon sites. The name Casa Malpaís means House of the Badlands, which was given to the site by early Basque sheepherders in reference to the surrounding volcanic lava field. The Springerville volcanic field contains over 400 volcanoes within a fifty mile radius of Springerville, making it the third largest volcanic field in the continental United States.[5]
Unique and unusual features characterize the site. The Great Kiva, painstakingly constructed of volcanic rock, is the centerpiece. A steep basalt staircase set into a crevice of the high basalt cliff wall leads to the top of the mesa.
Both the Hopi and Zuni Indian tribes still consider Casa Malpaís a sacred ancestral place.
The site is at an elevation of 7,000 feet and the pueblo is perched atop terraces on front of basalt cliffs. These cliffs were formed from lava flow from an ancient volcano. Around 1240 A.D., a 60 room pueblo, solar calendar, and Great Kiva were built by the people. The site was believed to be abandoned by 1350 A.D. [6]
The site includes the ruins of an ancient astronomical observatory. The observatory is circular with five openings, and is approximately 26 meters in diameter. Four of the openings are connected with solstices, equinoxes, or both, while the fifth opening indicates true north by aligning with a pointed foundation stone at the center of the south wall.
The summer solstice sunset casts a shadow across a pit outside the west opening, through the west opening, and onto the inside of the east wall just north of the southeast opening.
The winter solstice sunrise is marked by sunlight coming over the southeast opening and hitting an alter on the inside of the west wall where the wall bends, now marked with a sandstone slab with the letter A.
The winter solstice sunset emanates from a notch just over the west edge of Pole Knoll, located about 24 kilometers southwest of Casa Malpaís, and it passes over the south opening, over the east opening, through a boulder field above the calendar, and lands upon a bearclaw petroglyph on the cliff face.
The south opening is a little over a meter wide and the walls are offset to allow the Spring Equinox sunrise to pass through the offset in the walls across the southeast opening and through the south opening without hitting the inside of either south wall until well after sunrise. A white sandstone slab at the site marked with the letter S indicates which direction is south.
The first visit to Casa Malpaís by a professional anthropologist was in 1883, when Frank Cushing, an anthropologist living at Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, visited a site at "El Valle Redondo on the Colorado Chiquito", and was impressed by what he termed "the fissure type pueblo" he found there. In his journal he sketched dry masonry bridging fissures, upon which the pueblo is constructed.[7]
The Casa Malpais Visitor Center and Museum'is located on Main Street in Springerville, Arizona. The museum displays artifacts found at Casa Malpais and offers guided tours of the site that originate at the museum.
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