5O SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 63 



possible that there has been a slow change of climate, causing a desic- 

 cation which may have been so widespread that the inhabitants of the 

 plain were driven up river into the hills where water was more 

 abundant, but it is well to remember that abandoned settlements or 

 ruins exist on the banks of the Mimbres where there is still abundant 

 water, as well as in the plain which is dry. 



The depth of the present water level, as shown by drilling for wells, 

 varies in different places in the valley, but in the neighborhood of the 

 hills there are many springs. The configuration of the surface of the 

 hard clay strata lying beneath the soil here and there often forces the 

 water to rise to the surface, and ruins occur at points where at pres- 

 ent there are no signs of surface water, although at the time they 

 were inhabited there may have been more water. 1 Whether or not 

 this water was brought to certain ruins by a system of artificial irri- 

 gation, the canals of which have been obliterated, we cannot say, but 

 there is only scanty evidence that the climate here, as elsewhere, has 

 radically changed since man occupied the valley. 2 



Although there is a remote likeness between the terraced house or 

 pueblo community of northern New Mexico 3 and the prehistoric 

 houses of the Lower Mimbres, its closest resemblance is to an ante- 

 cedent type, for it is possible that the terraced pueblo culture in the 

 Rio Grande Valley was preceded by another. This earlier type of 

 habitation of the Mimbres Valley was like the fragile- walled house of 

 the natives inhabiting a large part of Arizona and New Mexico 

 before the Puebloan, and we have evidence that this older style of 

 building was scattered over the present Pueblo area. There is no 

 evidence of a terraced dwelling or pueblo more than one story high 



1 In dry seasons the river flows under the superficial soil at a varying depth, 

 but in floods it follows the surface bed. 



2 As the author has pointed out in several arficles, the abandonment of 

 Southwestern ruins is due to a variety of causes, chief of which are changes 

 of climate. It is often due to other, more local causes, as attacks by hostiles. 

 salinity of soil, poor site for defence, presence of wizards, contagious dis- 

 eases, etc. 



3 The designation "pueblo ruins" sometimes applied to any cluster of an- 

 cient house walls in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, should be 

 restricted to a well-defined architectural type which originated and reached 

 its highest development in a small area in New Mexico. It was eventually 

 carried by colonists in all directions from the center of origin, becoming in- 

 trusive as far west as the Hopi, Zuni, and Little Colorado. The boundaries 

 of this type never extended into Mexico in prehistoric times. The ruins along 

 the Mimbres are not community houses of terraced character and should not 

 be called pueblo ruins. 



