14 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 68 



like those of the great building of the same canyon, are built into the 

 mass of rooms and not separated from them as in the modern pueblos, 

 Walpi, those of the Rio Grande, and the ruin of Sun Temple on the 

 Mesa Verde. This separation of the kiva from the house mesa is 

 regarded by the author as a late evolution, being unknown among the 

 cliff dwellers, and very rare in pueblo ruins possessing ancient 

 characteristics. A union or huddling together of sacred and secular 

 rooms is characteristic of the period when each kiva was limited to 

 the performance of clan rites, the separation of the kiva from secular 

 rooms marking the development of a fraternity of priests composed 

 of different clans. The diameter of the kiva in Kin-a-a is about 



15 feet, the average size of these rooms, no doubt determined by the 

 length of logs available for roofs. When the diameter is greater than 

 that it is customary to make the roof in a vaulted form by utilizing 

 shorter roofing, but kivas as small as 10 feet in diameter were some 

 times roofed by vaulting. Depressions, in mounds, measuring as 

 much as 50 feet in diameter, in ruins in the Montezuma Valley have 

 been identified as circular ceremonial rooms, but as these have not 

 been excavated, there is always a doubt, for instead of being cere 

 monial and roofed they may have been uncovered reservoirs for 

 storage of water, for not all circular depressions are kivas. In Far 

 View Pueblo, 1 in the Mummy Lake Group, the author excavated a 

 kiva 32 feet in diameter, which was found to have pilasters for a 

 vaulted roof. No such pilasters occur in Kin-a-a, showing that the 

 roof was flat with a central hatchway, as is customary in all these 

 rooms with two or more stories. 



It is difficult to explain the enclosed space above the kiva in this 

 ruin. Was it occupied by rooms one above another, or was the 

 lower open to the sky? The rows of holes interpreted as indicating 

 floors is without significance, unless there were a number of super 

 posed rooms. It must be remembered that the ceremonial room or 

 kiva, in modern mythology, represents the underworld out of which, 

 according to legends, the early races of men emerged through an 

 opening in the roof or hatchway. Among the Hopi it is never 

 covered by another room, and this is carried so far that it is for 

 bidden to walk on a roof of a kiva, especially at a time when rites 

 are being performed. 2 Such an act would be regarded as sacrilegious, 



*A Prehistoric Mesa Verde Pueblo and its People, Smithsonian Report for 

 1916. 



2 At certain times in Hopi ceremonies a thin layer of sand is sprinkled over 

 the kiva roof, and on this sand are drawn in meal four rain-cloud figures, 

 around which are performed certain secret rites. 



