NO. I ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS FEWKES 35 



gan, and others we can explain why several are united in a cluster, 

 for it would seem that each room in such a cluster belonged to a family 

 or clan. The use of these towers as here suggested can not, however, 

 be proven until excavations of them are made and the signification 

 of the banquette constantly found annexed to their inner wall is 

 determined. 



Several structural remains in Ruin Canyon (pi. 14, b) , a tributary 

 of the Yellow Jacket, especially those at the head of the South Fork, 

 give a good idea of the relation of the tower to surrounding rooms. 

 Here we find towers constructed of fine, well preserved, masonry 

 rising to almost their original height, but crowded into the midst of 

 rectangular rooms imparting to the whole ruin a compact rectangular 

 form. Several towers in this canyon are without surrounding rooms, 

 others have rectangular, square or D-shaped ground plans, but the 

 author studied none with two or three concentric surrounding walls. 



The form of one of the largest ruins in Ruin Canyon situated near 

 the fork of the canyon, closely resembles Far View House, in the Mesa 

 Verde National Park. It has a central tower around which are 

 rooms with straight walls, the intervals between which and the circular 

 wall of the tower having a roughly triangular shape. While there is 

 but one tower in this ruin, its similarity in form and position to the 

 large central kiva of Far View House indicates that towers in the 

 McElmo are practically ceremonial rooms, as has been long suspected. 



This identity in form of tower and round kiva and the relative 

 abundance of both in the San Juan drainage, leads the author to 

 believe that one was derived from the other, in that district, and 

 spread from it southward and westward until, very much modified, 

 it reached the periphery of the pueblo area. It is believed that, in the 

 earliest time, the isolated tower was constructed for ceremonial pur- 

 poses and that rooms for habitations were dugouts or other structures 

 architecturally different from it. Later, domiciles were constructed 

 around the base of these towers until they encircled them in a compact 

 mass of rooms. The tower then lost its apparent height, but morpho- 

 logically retained its form. As this circular type of kiva spread into 

 the pueblo area in course of time it was again constructed indepen- 

 dently of the domiciles and the relative numbers diminished until, 

 as in some of the pueblos of the Rio Grande, there survive only one 

 or two kivas for each village, but these are no longer embedded in 

 habitations as in the more advanced archaic conditions. 



The tower kiva' may be regarded as the nucleus of the clan, or the 

 building erected for ceremonies of that clan, the earliest and best 



