cliff dweller

American  

noun

1. (usually initial capital letter) a member of a prehistoric people of the southwestern U.S., who were ancestors of the Pueblo Indians and built shelters in caves or on the ledges of cliffs.

2. a person who lives in an apartment house, especially in a large city.

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Other Word Forms

• cliff dwelling
  noun

Etymology

Origin of cliff dweller

An Americanism dating back to 1880–85

Example Sentences

Excavation in Step House Cave and discovery of its occupation by Basket Maker III people more than 3 centuries in advance of cliff dweller occupation.

From Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado by United States. Dept. of the Interior

Those of the latter are almost identical with the work of the Pueblo peoples in the cliff dweller stage, from southern Utah and Colorado to the Mexican boundary.

From Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744 by Fewkes, Jesse Walter

In reality they overhung the rudely level space like out-jutting eaves over the sun-deck that might have been carved to his taste by some old cliff dweller in front of his solitary retreat.

From The Short Cut by Johnson, Frank Tenney

This problem the cliff dweller solved by erecting terraces and filling in the irregular places.

From Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado by United States. Dept. of the Interior

The cliff dweller refuse at the south end of the cave had not been thoroughly cleaned out, however, and it was under this layer of trash that the important discovery was made.

From Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado by United States. Dept. of the Interior