CERTAIN EARLY PUEBLO VILLAGES IN 

 SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO 



By frank it. IT. I^OBERTS, JR., 



.IrrJicolof/ist , Ihirraii of .liiicricaii Jllhiiflhu/y 



Scattered alonc^ the lower benches and bkiffs above the Piedra River 

 in southwestern Colorado are the remains of many prehistoric Indian 

 villages belonging- to the earliest Pueblo period. Several of these one- 

 time communities were excavated by the writer during the summer 

 of 1928, with the result that much valuable data on house-types, as 

 well as many specimens of the material culture of the people, were 

 obtained. The sites were first discovered by the writer in the summer 

 of 1923 when he was conducting an archeological reconnaissance for 

 the State Historical and Natural History Society of Colorado. The 

 opportunity for an intensive investigation of them did not present 

 itself, however, until the 1928 field season. 



The present dav investigator finds himself confronted by a rather 

 curious paradox in the remains of these villages. Either through 

 accident or by intent they were swept by fire and that which destroyed 

 the houses then enables us to reconstruct them now. The dwellings 

 were for the most part rectangular one-room domiciles of pole and 

 adobe plaster construction. Due to the conflagration the plaster was 

 baked to a brick-like consistency which thus far has withstood the 

 erosive action of the centuries which must have passed since the early 

 Puelilo peoples dwelt there. Had it not been for this firing the adobe 

 would long ago have been melted back into the earth from which it 

 was taken and the unprotected poles would have decayed and fallen 

 into dust. In the majority of cases the timbers are no longer present, 

 it is true, but their imprints are ineft'aceably preserved in the hardened 

 plaster. The walls and ceilings fell when the posts burned but in 

 falling they went down as units, not as a jumbled mass, and it is a 

 comparatively simple matter to determine the exact positions and 

 manner in which they stood. In a few of the houses portions of some 

 of the walls are still standing (fig. 145). and where such is the case 

 bits of charred posts are to be seen encompassed by the Inirned clay. 



Evidence secured from more than 60 houses makes possible quite 

 definite conclusions as to their nature and the manner in which the\- 

 were grouped together to make a village. Two forms of construction 



161 



