Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 179-262Mindeleff, Cosmos
History
Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 179-262
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities; Verde River Valley (Ariz.) -- Antiquities
In a general way it may be stated that the masonry of the village ruins
of this region is much inferior to that of the San Juan region, and in
its rough and unfinished surfaces, in the use of an inferior material
close at hand rather than a better material a short distance away, and
in the ignorance on the part of the builders of many constructive
devices and expedients employed in the best examples of pueblo masonry,
the work of this region may be ranked with that of the Tusayan--in other
words, at the lower end of the scale.
[Illustration: Figure 301.
Walled front cavate lodges.]
There is but little masonry about the cavate lodges, and that is rude in
character. As elsewhere stated, walled fronts are exceptional in this
region, and where they occur the work was done very roughly. Figure 301
shows an example that occurs in the group of cavate lodges already
described. It will be noticed that little selection has been exercised
in the stones employed, and that an excess of mortar has been used to
fill in the large interstices. Figure 290 (p. 221), which shows a
storage cist attached to the group of cavate lodges, marked _D_ on the
map (plate XXV), exhibits the same excessive use of adobe or mud
plastering. At several other points in the area shown on this map there
are short walls, sometimes inside the lodges, sometimes outside. In all
cases, however, they are rudely constructed and heavily plastered with
mud; in short, the masonry of the cavate lodges exhibits an ignorance
fully equal to that of the stone villages, while the execution is, if
anything, ruder. It is singular that, notwithstanding the excessive use
of mud mortar and mud plastering in the few walls that are found there,
such plastering was almost never used on the walls in the interiors of
the lodges, perhaps because no finer finish than the rough surface of
the rock was considered desirable.
[Illustration: Plate XLIV.
BOWLDER FOUNDATIONS NEAR LIMESTONE CREEK.]
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