Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace — John Shaqi
Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff PalaceFewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Colorado -- Antiquities; Mesa Verde National Park (Colo.)
Two of the estufas in the Cliff Palace deviate from the normal
type. This is the only instance where I have observed estufas
differing in construction from the ordinary form described in
Chapter III. The northern estufa (44 in the plan) is the better
preserved of the two. To a height of 1 meter from the floor it
is square in form (3×3 m.) with rounded corners (see figs. 35
and 36). Above it is wider and bounded by the walls of the
surrounding rooms, a ledge (_b_, _b_) of irregular shape being
thus formed a few feet from the floor. In two of the rounded
corners on a level with this ledge (a little to the right in
fig. 36) niches or hollows (_d_, _d_; breadth 48 cm., depth 45
cm.) have been constructed, and between them, at the middle of
the south-east wall, a narrow passage (breadth 40 cm.), open at
the top. At the bottom of one side of this passage a
continuation thereof was found, corresponding probably to the
tunnel in estufas of the ordinary type. At the north corner of
the room the wall is broken by three small niches (_e_, _e_,
_e_) quite close together, each of them occupying a space about
equal to that left by the removal of two stones from the wall.
The sandstone blocks of which the walls are built are carefully
hewn, as in the ordinary cylindrical estufas. Whether the usual
hearth, in form of a basin, and the wall beside it, had been
constructed here I was unfortunately unable to determine, more
than half of the room being filled with rubbish. I give the
name of estufas to these square rooms with rounded corners,
built as described above, because they are furnished with the
passage characteristic of the round estufas in the
cliff-dwellings. Perhaps they mark the transition to the
rectangular estufa of the Moki Indians. Besides the estufas
there are some other round rooms or towers (21 _a_, 23, 63),
which evidently belonged to the fortifications of the village.
They differ from the estufas in the absence of the
characteristic passage and also of the six niches. Furthermore,
they often contain several stories, and in every respect but
the form resemble the rectangular rooms. The long wall just
mentioned, built on a narrow ledge above the other ruins, and
visible at the top of Pl. XIII was probably another part of the
village fortifications. The ledge is situated so near the roof
of the cave that the wall, though quite low, touches the
latter, and the only way of advancing behind it is to creep on
hands and knees.
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