Casa Grande Ruin: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 289-318Mindeleff, Cosmos
History
Casa Grande Ruin: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 289-318
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Arizona -- Antiquities; Casa Grande National Monument (Ariz.); Hohokam architecture; Indians of North America -- Arizona
The walls of the southern room are perhaps better finished and less well
constructed than any others in the building. The beam holes in the
southern wall are regular, those in the northern wall less so. The beams
used averaged a little smaller than those in the other rooms, and there
is no trace whatever in the overhanging wall of the use of rushes or
canes in the construction of the roof above. The walls depart
considerably from vertical plane surfaces; the southern wall inclines
fully 12 inches inward, while in the northeastern corner the side of a
doorway projects fully 3 inches into the room. The broken condition of
the southern wall indicates carelessness in construction. The weakest
point in pise construction is of course the framing around openings. In
the southern wall the openings, being doubtless the first to give way,
are now almost completely obliterated. In the center of the wall there
were two openings, one above the other, but not a trace of lintels now
remains, and the eastern half of the wall now stands clear from other
walls. Probably there was also an opening near the southwestern corner
of the room, but the lintels giving way the wall above fell down and, as
shown on the ground plan (plate LII), filled up the opening. This could
happen only with exceptionally light lintels and exceptionally bad
construction of walls; one of the large blocks, before described as
composing the wall, must have rested directly above the opening, which
was practically the same size as the block.
The walls of the eastern room were well finished, and, except the
western wall, in fairly good preservation. The floor beams were not
placed in a straight line, but rise slightly near the middle, as noted
above. The finish of some of the openings suggests that the floor was
but 3 or 4 inches above the beams, and that the roughened surface,
already mentioned, was not part of it. The northern wall of this room
seems to have run through to the outside, on the east, as though at one
time it formed the exterior wall of the structure; and the eastern wall
of the building north of this room is separated from the rest of the
wall by a wide crack, as though it had been built against a smooth
surface. The western wall of this room shows clearly that in the
construction of the building the floor beams were laid on the tops of
the walls, and that the intervening spaces were filled with small lumps
of material up to a level with or a little above the upper surface of
the beams, the regular construction with large blocks being then
resumed.
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