FEWKEs] ANTIQUITIES OF MESA VEEDE NATIONAL PARK 47 



skillfully closetl with adobe mortar, so that even now if the door were 

 replaced it would be almost rat proof. The door opening is square, 

 and is situated at the w^estern side. There is no adequate evidence 

 that these rooms served as turkey houses, as some have interpreted 

 them. 



The rear walls of rooms 89 and 90 are well preserved, but those in 

 front have been completely destroyed. The former has a banquette 

 like that of the Speaker-chief's House. The walls of rooms situated 

 north and east of kiva U, now reduced in height, formerly extended 

 to the roof of the cave, which is here somewhat lower than in the 

 middle of the cavern. The existence of these former walls is indi- 

 cated by light bands on the smoke-covered surface of the cave roof, 

 and fragments of clay still adhering- to the side of the cliff show that 

 the walls here were two and three stories high. 



In rooms 84, 85, and 86 the builder took advantage of the clilf for 

 rear Avails. The middle of the floor of 84 has a depression lijied with 

 vertical slabs of stone, evidently a fireplace, as it contained a quantity 

 of wood ashes. In the floor on the eastern side of this fireplace there 

 is a short trench also lined w-ith stone and containing wood ashes, the 

 relation of which to the other inclosure is u.nknown. It appears that 

 this exceptional structure was not used in the same way as the fire- 

 places so constantly met with in other rooms, but that it might have 

 been used for baking paper-bread, called piki by the Hopi. In a 

 corner of room 91 there is another depression, half under the floor, 

 covered with a flat stone, that appears quite likely to have been used 

 for this purpose. Unlike the fireplaces sunken in the floor, the one 

 in room 84 is partially or wholly above the floor, its confining stones 

 being several inches above the floor level. 



Room 92 is the best example of a milling room in Cliff Palace. It 

 has four grinding bins, or metatakis, arranged side by side, with 

 all the parts entire and in working condition. When excavation was 

 begun in this part of the ruin these structures were wholly concealed 

 under fallen rocks. As streams of water from a vertical cleft in the 

 cliff poured down upon them after exposure during periods of rain, 

 it was necessary to construct a roof to protect them." The discovery 

 of this and of other grinding rooms shows that the cliff-house 

 metatakis are the same in structure as those in the Hopi pueblos. 

 In an inclosure south of these metatakis was found a granary. 

 Fragments of w^alls projecting from the cliff west of room 93 show 

 the former existence of rooms in this section, but as their front w^alls 

 have been obliterated by the downpour of water their form is obscure. 



« On the top of the rock that forms the foundation of the walls of these rooms, and 

 south of them, are hollows or grooves where the metates were ground, and shallow pits 

 used in some prehistoric game. There are similar pits in some of the kiva floors. 



