A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola: Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 3-228Mindeleff, Cosmos
History
A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola: Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 3-228
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities; Pueblo architecture
In ancient construction, the method of arranging the material varied
somewhat. In some cases series 3 was very carefully constructed of
straight willow wands laid side by side in contact. This gave a very
neat appearance to the ceiling within the room. Examples were seen in
Canyon de Chelly, at Mummy Cave, and at Hungo Pavie and Pueblo Bonito on
the Chaco.
[Illustration: Plate LXXI. Pescado houses.]
Again examples occur where series 2 is composed of 2-inch poles in
contact and the joints are chinked on the upper side with small stones
to prevent the earth from sifting through. This arrangement was seen in
a small cluster on the canyon bottom on the de Chelly.
The small size of available roofing rafters has at Tusayan brought about
a construction of clumsy piers of masonry in a few of the larger rooms,
which support the ends of two sets of main girders, and these in turn
carry series 1, or the main ceiling beams of the roof. The girders are
generally double, an arrangement that has been often employed in ancient
times, as many examples occur among the ruins. The purpose of such
arrangement may have been to admit of the abutment of the ends of series
1, when the members of the latter were laid in contact. In the absence
of squared beams, which seem never to have been used in the old work,
this abutment could only be securely accomplished by the use of double
girders, as suggested in the following diagram, Fig. 38.
[Illustration: Fig. 38. Showing abutment of smaller roof beams over
round girders.]
The final roof covering, composed of clay, is usually laid on very
carefully and firmly, and, when the surface is unbroken, answers fairly
well as a watershed. A slight slope or fall is given to the roof. This
roof subserves every purpose of a front yard to the rooms that open upon
it, and seems to be used exactly like the ground itself. Sheepskins are
stretched and pegged out upon it for tanning or drying, and the
characteristic Zuñi dome-shaped oven is frequently built upon it. In
Zuñi generally upper rooms are provided only with a mud floor, although
occasionally the method of paving with large thin slabs of stone is
adopted. These are often somewhat irregular in form, the object being to
have them as large as possible, so that considerable ingenuity is often
displayed in selecting the pieces and in joining the irregular edges.
This arrangement, similar to that of the kiva floors of Tusayan, is
occasionally met with in the kivas.
In making excavations at Kin-tiel, the floor of the ground room in which
the circular door illustrated in Pl. C, was found was paved with large,
irregular fragments of stone, the thickness of which did not average
more than an inch. Its floor, whose paving was all in place, was strewn
with broken, irregular fragments similar in character, which must have
been used as the flooring of an upper chamber.
WALL COPINGS AND ROOF DRAINS.
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