HOVENWEEP NATIONAL MONUMENT FEWKES 469 



cations that they were built by an agricultural people, one of the 

 primal necessities of whom is to determine the time for planting. 

 This can be obtained by observations of the sun's rising and setting, 

 and a tower affords the elevation necessary for that purpose; hence 

 the theory that southwestern towers were in part used for sun 

 houses or observatories. A building from which the aboriginal 

 priests determined calendric events by solar observations very 

 naturally became a room for sun worship or for the worship of the 

 power of the sky. 



The presence of circular subterranean rooms, which almost always 

 occur with towers, also indicates religious rites. As the tower may 

 have been devoted to the worship of father sun or the sky god, in 

 the underground kiva may have been celebrated the rites of mother 

 earth. The rooms at the base of the tower in which kivas are em- 

 bedded, in towers of the third type, indicate habitations and neces- 

 sary granaries, as well as rooms for ceremonials. In support of 

 the interpretation that some of these rooms are granaries, we find 

 rows of vases in which corn is stored still standing in them. 



Pipe Shrine House, on Mesa Verde, excavated by the author 

 during the summer of 1922, presents a good example of the third 

 type, for in it we have the tower, the sunken kiva, and the rec- 

 tangular basal rooms. The ceremonial character of this building 

 is shown not only by the tower and kiva, but also by many shrines 

 in which formerly stood stone idols of the serpent, the mountain 

 lion, the mountain sheep, or other objects of worship. On the 

 northeast corner of the ruin near an inclosure there was found a 

 stone slab on which the sun was depicted, indicating that this 

 building may have been used for sun-worship rites, and a coiled 

 pictograph of a large serpent carved on the south wall likewise 

 points to this worship. The evidence indicates that this building 

 was constructed for rites and ceremonies of the sun and earth 

 deities, and the tower and its accompanying subterranean room in 

 cliff houses indicate that the ancient priests of Mesa Verde wor- 

 shipped the two great nature principles, father sky and mother 

 earth, which dominate the ritual of every agricultural people. 



The new reservation, called the Hovenweep 2 National Monument 

 (fig. 1), contains several towers in a much better state of preservation 

 than any in the Mesa Verde, a condition which indicates that they 

 were constructed later. The ruined castles and towers of this 

 monument are among the best preserved aboriginal buildings in the 



2 The name Hovenweep, which has been given to this monument, is taken from the Ute 

 language and has been translated " Deserted Valley." It is now applied to a tributary of 

 the Yellowjacket, but was originally the name of the main canyon. 



1454—25—31 



