American Man's Oldest Home? 



certain Desert Culture populations not 

 only cultivated corn, but built houses 

 that were quite unlike any dwellings 

 previously known from North America, 

 and clustered them together in small 

 villages which may have been fortified 

 by stone walls. 



I 



t was Hill who spotted the nearly ob- 

 literated signs that men had once lived, 

 thousands of years ago, on the Snowflake 

 site. "You can imagine," Martin sug- 

 gests, "what it was like to identify the 

 remains of human habitation after two 

 thousand years had passed if you think 

 how difficult it would be to relocate a 

 camp site you made in the woods even 

 50 years ago." 



What Hill and Martin discerned were 

 patches of dark, charcoal-colored, ashy 

 soil on the surface of the ground; bits of 

 chipped stone mixed with other cultural 

 debris; and a few slab-like stones — later 

 interpreted as part of a wall — barely 

 protruding from the ground beside a 

 clump of trees. 



On the strength of this evidence, the 

 Museum archaeologists, together with a 

 group of carefully chosen and trained 

 students, began systematic digging. Af- 

 ter marking a grid over an area about 

 40 yards square, they excavated each 

 square of the grid, keeping the soil from 

 each section separate from the rest. Dig- 

 ging was done with picks, shovels, trow- 

 els, and — in the last delicate stages — 

 with whiskbrooms. All the excavated 

 earth was then sifted through a screen. 

 The relics of human habitation — mostly 

 chipped stone projectile points, knives, 

 scrapers, and choppers — were carefully 



16' 



%m - POST HOLES 



A reconstruction of the floor plan of a Desert Culture house In the drawing, 

 the orientation of the lower photograph on the opposite page is reversed. 

 (Drawing by M. Pa hi.) 



marked according to the section of grid 

 and sedimentary level of the ground in 

 which they were found. 



At a level scarcely a foot below the 

 earth's surface, Martin and Hill came 

 upon the first remains of a human dwell- 

 ing. These consisted of post holes, with 

 bits of charred cedar wood still in them, 

 set in a circular form. Immediately the 

 archaeologists knew these were the re- 

 mains of a building entirely different 



from the pit houses built by later inhab- 

 itants of the region. The newly discov- 

 ered dwelling had been constructed 

 above, not under the ground. 



The Museum party continued exca- 

 vating until the house was fully un- 

 earthed. It measured about 16 feet in 

 diameter. Cedar saplings, set upright 

 at irregular intervals, had supported its 

 walls. Probably the walls themselves 

 (Continued on next page) 



NOVEMBER Page 3 



