478 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



follow down the San Juan to an indefinite horizon. In the south the 

 culture they represent merges into the Chaco Canyon region and 

 that of the pueblos on the Rio Grande. 



The relationship of Hovenweep buildings to those on the Mesa 

 Verde is practically identical, but there are forms of buildings 

 in the Hovenweep country which have not yet been found on the 

 Mesa Verde. The massive character of the walls of several typical 

 buildings of the Hovenweep suggests solidity and construction 

 necessary for defense, and these buildings are ordinarily situated 

 on the edges of great canyons and may have been so placed to se- 

 cure distance views down the canyons or extensive vistas over the 

 waterless plains. Plate 10 shows a tower on a projecting rock which 

 has fallen and probably buried a cave dwelling. The masonry of the 

 great houses is the most massive of all those made by the inhabitants 

 of the San Juan drainage. In addition to this feature, attention 

 may be called to the predominance of the tower element, which is 

 likewise a Mesa Verde characteristic. They are condensed in form, 

 not spread over a large area. The closest of the Hovenweep like- 

 nesses to the Mesa Verde buildings is the ceremonial rooms known 

 as kivas, which are seen in Unit T^ype House, wherein we have a 

 single central circular room surrounded by square rooms, very 

 similar to the One Clan House near the road from Mancos to Spruce- 

 tree House. The terraced form of building so common among mod- 

 ern pueblos and so well illustrated in Far View House on the Mesa 

 Verde has not thus far been made out clearly in pueblos of the 

 Hovenweep Monument, nor do we find clusters of disjoined small 

 buildings indicating a pueblo in process of formation so common 

 in Hovenweep Monument as at Mesa Verde. This indicates to the 

 writer's mind that the unconsolidated units of the Mesa Verde 

 pueblos are older than the more closely amalgamated pueblos of the 

 Hovenweep or the still more compact Chaco pueblos. It is apparent, 

 as no evidence of white habitation has been found, that all are strictly 

 pre-Columbian buildings; and their fine preservation would indicate 

 that they are more modern than the mounds which conceal similar 

 buildings on the Mesa Verde. 



As we go west from Hovenweep there is a gradual change in archi- 

 tectural types and a corresponding change in relative age of the monu - 

 mental remains. While stone houses whose walls are not very unlike 

 those of the Hovenweep occur in this far western region, there is an 

 older appearance to the ruins and a closer affinity to a prepuebloan 

 type which on the Mesa Verde underlies the puebloan. In the Hoven- 

 weep Monument there are evidences of two epochs of culture, an early 

 earth lodge or pit dwelling culture and a later epoch, the buildings of 

 which were constructed upon the more ancient. This underlying 



