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Mesa Verde Voices Launches Season 3 On ‘Amazing Relationships’ In Ancient Trade

Courtesy of Mesa Verde Voices
An apron (also referred to as a sash) made of macaw feathers in the collections of Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum.

As it appears today, cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park look desolate and distant from their neighbors. But what is now the national park was just one part of an expansive trade network that stretched from California to the southeastern United States and south into Central America. 

In the third season of Mesa Verde Voices, a podcast produced by KSJD in partnership with the national park, host Kayla Woodward hopes to change this perception by sharing a history of how trade connected people hundreds of years ago.

“It’s very easy for visitors to perceive the people as being very isolated and separate from even neighboring cliff dwellings,” Woodward said. “We really wanted to highlight these amazing relationships.”

The first episode is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and on Mesa Verde Voices’ website. Kicking off the season is an introduction to trade from Bridget Ambler, supervisory curator at Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum.

“These Mesa Verde inhabitants were a lot like you and I,” Ambler said in the season opener. “Sometimes we like things from other places to remind us that there’s a world out there that’s larger than ourselves.”

In upcoming episodes, released each Friday, Woodward said to expect to hear how color was traded and how macaw feathers ended up in the Southwest.

Listen to Woodward’s full interview below along with an excerpt from the first episode.