Zuni
More recently, Zuni culture may have been related to both the Mogollon and Ancestral Pueblo peoples cultures, who lived in the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and southern Colorado for over two millennia. The "village of the great kiva" near the contemporary Zuni Pueblo was built in the 11th century AD. The Zuni region, however, was probably only sparsely populated by small agricultural settlements until the 12th century when the population and the size of the settlements began to increase. In the 14th century, the Zuni inhabited a dozen pueblos between 180 and 1,400 rooms in size. All of these pueblos, except Zuni, were abandoned by 1400, and over the next 200 years, nine large new pueblos were constructed. These were the "seven cities of Cibola" sought by early Spanish explorers. By 1650, there were only six Zuni villages.
Zuni-Cibola Complex
The Zuni Pueblo has a large number of archaeological sites, and was considered in the early 1970s as a site for a major national cultural park, based on a subset of those sites that are larger and suitable for public access. The stated intent was to preserve and stabilize the archaeological properties, and to properly interpret them for visitors to the region. Congress authorized enabling legislation in 1988, but the proposal foundered when the people of Zuni Pueblo overwhelmingly voted against leasing land to the National Park Service for the project. The park proposal included four major elements, described below, all of which are located on Zuni reservation lands.