334 PROCEEDINGS: ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



day, October 21, 1919. The meeting was devoted to discussion of 

 Field experiences and the results of the anthropological work of the 

 past year. The discussion was continued at the 539th meeting, held 

 at the same place and hour, on Tuesday, November 4, 19 19. 



540TH MEETING 



The 540th meeting was held in room 42-43 of the National Museum, 

 at 4.45 p.m. on Tuesday, December 9, 1919. Program: 



Philip Ainsworth Means: The Department of Piura, Peru. (Il- 

 lustrated with lantern slides.) 



54 1 ST MEETING 



The 541st meeting was held in room 42-43 of the National Museum, 

 at 4.45 p.m. on Tuesday, January 6, 1920. Program: 



J. Walter Fewkes, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 The genesis of the cliff dwellings. (Illustrated.) 



The speaker pointed out the characteristic architectural features of 

 the highest type of cliff dwelhngs as illustrated by Square Tower House, 

 a ruin situated in the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, excavated 

 and repaired last summer in continuation of the development of the 

 educational research of the Park by the Smithsonian Institution and 

 Department of the Interior. This ruin belongs to what is called the 

 pure type of pueblo, which differs from other types in our Southwest 

 and from other cliff dwellings in the world in the style of construction 

 of the sacred room or kiva, which is prehistoric and now extinct. The 

 differences of this type from others' were shown by views of a model 

 made for that purpose. In no other ruins in the Mesa Verde is the 

 vaulted roof of a kiva of this kind so well preserved as in Square Tower 

 House. 



The speaker said we need not look outside the area characterized 

 by this type of kiva for a record of its evolution, and that it developed 

 in the same geographic area in which it occurs, before it became ex- 

 tinct. The earlier stages in its evolution, previously unknown in the 

 Mesa Verde National Park, were discovered last summer among the 

 cedars at the head of the trail to vSquare Tower House. These buildings, 

 the speaker claimed, may be regarded as prototypes of the unit type 

 kivas of the cliff dwellings having likewise affinities with habitations of 

 non-pueblo peoples from which the cliff dwellers were descended. 

 One of these, called Earth Lodge A, a view of which was shown, was 

 thoroughly excavated. Its essential difference from earth lodges of 

 non-pueblos is the existence of stone bins made of slabs of stone on edge. 

 Between Earth Lodge A with its rude vertical stone slabs and vSquare 

 Tower House with its regular horizontal masonry and multiple unit 

 type kivas is a series of buildings awaiting investigation and illustrating 

 the evolution of cliff dwellings. 



Dr. Fewkes considers that the stone cysts of the basket makers of 

 Utah and the slab-house people of the same locality are products of a 

 people of similar archaic culture, preceding those who constructed the 



