The Modified Basketmakers usually lived in villages made up of irregularly grouped houses with granaries clustered about them. In some cases there were only a few dwellings, in others there were as many as a hundred. Houses were usually of the pit variety, sometimes built very close together but not contiguous. The earliest structures were circular, but later they became more oval and eventually a rectangular form prevailed. At first houses were entered through a passageway leading from the ground outside. Sometimes there was a small antechamber at the outer end of the entrance passage. The pit depth varied from three to five feet and the diameter of the structures ranged between nine and twenty-five feet. The pit walls were sometimes plastered, but more often they were lined with stone slabs. Occasionally a few rows of adobe bricks were placed over the slabs. In some cases a combination of slabs and plaster was used, in others, poles or reeds covered with mud formed the wainscoting. [Illustration: Fig. 16—Modified-Basketmaker house after excavation. (Courtesy Mesa Verde National Park.)] The pit was covered by a conical or truncated superstructure with a hole in the center, designed to permit smoke to escape from the fireplace on the floor below. Later in the period the entrance passageways were so reduced in size as no longer to permit the passage of a human body, and entrance to the houses seems to have been through the hole or hatchway in the roof in which was placed a ladder leading to the room below. The roof surface may, in some cases, have provided extra living space since metates, manos, and pottery, have been found overlying roof timbers. Usually the basis of the superstructure was formed by four posts, imbedded in the floor, and supporting a platform of horizontal timbers. Smaller timbers or poles, set into the ground, leaned against the platform and others were laid horizontally across it. The whole was covered with mats or brush, then topped with a layer of plaster and earth reinforced with twigs, grass, and bark. [Illustration: Fig. 17—Postulated method of Modified-Basketmaker house construction. (After Roberts,[105] Courtesy Smithsonian Institution.)] The side entrance was retained in a reduced form, apparently to provide ventilation. An upright slab, often found standing between the fire pit and the passage opening, is believed to have served the purpose of keeping the inrushing air from putting out the fire, and is known as a _deflector_. There was often a bench or shelf running around the inside of the house. This was sometimes omitted along the south side. Some storage bins were built against the walls of the house.