In response to a query from Sun May, I thought I might start an exploration of this question. Is the word "Anasazi" really a legitimate descriptor for people who lived around the Four Corners area of southwestern North America over the last couple of millennia? To me, the answer is "Yes" and "No." Seems like a cop out, but I'll explain.
First of all, the flute I recently bought from Geoffrey Ellis is rightly listed as
Basketmaker style, from people who preceded the Pueblo era during which the Anasazi lived. The flutes found at what is now known as "
Broken Flute Cave" in northeastern Arizona have been tree-ring dated to somewhere between 620 and 640 AD by our calendar, during a time period known to archaeologists as Basketmaker III (500-750). They were the ancestors of the people later called Anasazi, who lived between 750 and 1280, and who suddenly "disappeared" within less than a decade. They didn't really, but more on that in a moment.
The term "Anasazi" is actually a later Navajo word, meaning "ancient stranger," or, some people believe "ancient enemy." It was never used by the people it describes, but by a rival cultural group. This leads some people to believe it is not really appropriate, especially if it was mean to signify enemies.
Problem is, other terms have been suggested to replace it, and none has really been widely acceptable, nor do they really provide an adequate description of these people. They are all just different ways for somebody other than the Navajo to describe these people.
The alternative with the widest following is "Ancestral Puebloans," mostly because it satisfies some concerns expressed modern Pueblo people, who indeed, are the descendants of those who fled the Four Corners area in the late 13th Century. They traveled East and South, and many of them founded the Pueblo villages that still exist in the Rio Grande Valley.
So that would seem to be an ideal descriptor, except that the Anasazi fled not only geographically, but culturally and politically as well. Rebelling against the iron rule of those at Chaco Canyon, Aztec Ruins, and Pacquimé, they also rebelled against the religion and government they felt were imposed on them by outsiders. As a result, modern Puebloans follow very different religious practices and hold to a much more egalitarian form of government than was true of their ancestors. So they are descendants of those we call Anasazi, but not really their heirs.
The word Anasazi evokes an air of mystery and intrigue, made no less so by the exciting discovery of four of their rim-blown flutes. No other term to describe these people or label them, has been able to equal that mystique. So I join noted archaeologist Stephen H. Lekson, and others, in continuing to use that word, despite objections, which I consider trivial. For far more detail than I can supply here, see Lekson's book,
A History of the Ancient Southwest, wherein he remedies literally decades of shortsighted archaeological convention to give us a much more reasonable version of the history and culture of these fascinating people.