The southwest has plenty of layers on layers. Tucson is built on a Spanish fort, which is built on native villages on top of yet older native villages going back almost 4,000 years, as one example.
replyFor another example, most neighborhoods in eastern phoenix are built on top of old Hohokam villages, adjoining older basketmaker sites. The canals throughout the city often follow the old Hohokam canals. Fun fact, the Intel Chandler campus is on top of old hohokam suburbs of Pueblo de los muertos, which is buried under the modern suburbs.
The Puebloan culture in the southwest during that time was basically a full fledged civilization. It's insane how underresearched such a culture is despite having built megastructures like within the Grand Chaco Canyon
replydid they leave behind significant amounts of writing?
replyNope. Which is what makes it so difficult. Additionally, adjacent nations like the Navajo, Apache, and others are very tight lipped about their extremely robust ancestral and oral history because of bad experiences along with taboos.
replyIt felt like a mix of rightful wariness due to untrustworthy opportunistic anthropologists from the 19th and 20th century along with taboos that developed due to some sort of collapse.