Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park

Investigation, Documentation, and Structural Analysis

UTSA Center for Cultural Sustainability, 2021-2022 (PI: William Dupont ; Client: Mesa Verde National Park ; Collaborators: James Mason, Angela Lombardi, Sara Rodriguez-Jimeno)

I participated in a multidisciplinary team of engineers, architects, scientists, and cultural resource specialists (archaeologists, archivists, historians) in a multi-year engineering analysis of Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built by Ancestral Puebloans circa 1190 to 1260, Cliff Palace contains about 150 rooms and 23 kivas and is the largest cliff dwelling in North America.

Our team at the University of Texas at San Antonio is leading the study, closely collaborating with the National Park Service. I participated in four site visits, documenting the structure and conducting archival research. Offsite, I pieced together the historical record to provide the most complete narrative of the ruin’s stabilization (i.e. preservation or restoration) during the historic/post-contact period (since 1888). I also created photogrammetric models of each kiva from extensive photographs I took to aid my understanding of the structure away from the site. In addition to the narrative, I diagrammed all known stabilization onto views I generated from a Rhino model of the site that the Park Service had provided to us.

The aim of the project is to assess the structural integrity of the site, principally to determine the risk of the ruin creeping down the shallow talus slope it is built upon but also deformations that may be occurring within the ruin. This will be accomplished using 3D geomechanical continuum modeling. The goal is that this study’s findings will be used to design an engineered solution to arrest any motion that may compromise the site’s structural integrity.