As river basins around the state, including one here in Southwest Colorado, make their plans for water management, advice from the ancestral Puebloans might come in handy.
That’s the premise of “Colorado Experience,” which will air on Rocky Mountain PBS at 7 p.m. today and 2:29 p.m. Friday. It will feature archaeologists from Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and Mesa Verde National Park in an episode called “Living West: Water.”
“Archaeology has a lot to teach us in terms of the way people living in Southwest Colorado harnessed and used water resources,” said Grant Coffey, a supervisory field archaeologist at Crow Canyon. “They understood the land.”
The ancestral Puebloans understood what was possible from the local topography and environment, he said.
“A little bit of that reverence, a little bit of that appreciation, would serve us well, too,” he said.
Herald Staff