@pascaline Pretty much yes to all your questions. They farmed on top of the mesas & sometimes in the canyon bottoms. Lots of books on the topic of the cliff dwellers & what became of them. People lived in the canyons off & on for over thousand years. The last batch to live there was ~1200CE. Most research suggests it was a time of great struggle with warring tribes &c., & then famine that drove them out. Here's a photo from inside the round kiva (where the two latter rungs stick out) at night.
@elaterite
Thanks, this is so interesting!
Wow. The life they had, it must have been hard.
I wonder if this kind of dwellings could somehow be revived.
@pascaline They have have. In several places around canyon country there are private residences built into the cliffs.