MESA VERDE PUEBLO — FEWKES. 477 



walls of several rooms above corner fireplaces, the abundance of 

 household utensils, as pottery and other objects, show that the pueblo 

 was once inhabited and that people dwelt in the buildings many 

 years. 



Nowhere is the plastering so well preserved as in the walls of 

 kivas between the floor and the level of the tops of the pilastei^. 

 The stratification of this plaster recalls a custom among living 

 pueblo people. It is customary annually in February for the Hopi 

 girls to replaster all the kivas, an episode which forms a part of 

 lustral rites that pervade the Powamu or purification from the evil 

 god who has control of the fields in winter. A somewhat similar 

 ceremony may have taken place in the Mesa Verde pueblos. The 

 successive layers of smoked clay are indicated on sections of plaster 

 from the wall of kiva B, and number at least 20. This kiva had 

 been plastered 20 times. 



On the floor of a second-story room, below those in which are the 

 T-shaped doorways, were found slabs of stone set upright forming 

 a grinding bin, in which a grinding stone or a metate was found in 

 place. In the west corner of the same room the walls showed marks 

 of smoke and an arrangement of stone slabs indicating a fireplace. 



REPAIR AND PRESERVATION OF WALLS. 



As has been pointed out in an account of Sun Temple,^ the destruc- 

 tion of the walls of ruins standing under the open sky is largely due 

 to violent rains or the infiltration of snow water and its subsequent 

 freezing. To obviate this destructive agency the tops of all walls in 

 Sun Temple were covered with Portland cement laid on adobe with 

 a foundation of broken stones or rubble. This precaution has been 

 found to accomplish the required results. Not a rock of the walls 

 of Sun Temple fell from its place in the winter of 1915. The tops 

 of the walls of the kivas of the pueblo excavated during the summer 

 of 1916 were treated in much the same way, except that a coarse groat 

 was added to sand in the cement. 



In the repair work at Far View House it was necessary also to add 

 a few courses of masonry to the tops of the exposed walls, and to 

 prop up the outer walls on the west and south side with buttresses. 

 The largest of these buttresses appears as steps on the west outer 

 wall, which leaned so much that it certainly would have fallen as 

 soon as uncovered if not held up in this way. This buttress was 

 constructed about fallen walls. 



To prevent the partition walls on the west tier of rooms from 

 falling when their supports were removed their west ends were tied 



1 Excavation and Repair of Sun Temple, Mesa Verde National Park. Department of 

 the Interior, 1916. 



