Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff PalaceFewkes, Jesse Walter
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Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Colorado -- Antiquities; Mesa Verde National Park (Colo.)
Room 51 has a very well preserved fireplace in the northwestern corner
and a doorway about midway in the northern wall. Its well-plastered
walls show impressions of the hands and fingers of the plasterers.
The eastern side of the "street"[41] is bordered by rooms 60 to 63,
inclusive, which open into it. In the wall of the last room (61) to the
south there is a small peephole that enabled the owners to see from
within the room anyone entering the street from the court. Room 59,
probably the largest angular room in Cliff Palace, is without an
entrance. Its high walls form a part of the northern and eastern ends of
the court and almost the whole western side of the street. A large
embrasure in its southern wall had been repaired by the ancient masons
before Cliff Palace was deserted. North of room 59 remains of the
foundations of rooms (not numbered on the plan) were found, and it may
be possible that at this point there was a small open space, without a
kiva; if so, it would have been exceptional in Cliff Palace.
[Footnote 41: A passage or inclosure surrounded by high walls is called
kisombi by the Hopi.]
Rooms 66 and 68 are round rooms, not kivas, although possibly ceremonial
in character. From the roof of room 66, the walls of which are now lower
than formerly, it was possible to pass on a level into one of the series
of ledge rooms previously described. The floor of room 68 is exceptional
in being lower than that of the cave outside, so that on entering it
one descends by a step or two. Room 67 appears to have been more a
passageway (_kisombi_) than a room, a step from it leading down to the
level of the triangular plaza in front of the Speaker-chief's House,
south of room 70.
Room 70 is a milling room, with two well-preserved metatakis in one
corner, each with a set of metates. In the wall above these mealing
troughs there is a small window through which the women engaged in
grinding corn could see the passers through the court east of this room.
The opposite corner is occupied by a fireplace, and the adjacent wall is
pierced by a doorway with elevated threshold, through which one passed
from the milling room to the broad Speaker-chief's platform south of
rooms 71 and 72.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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