78 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 51 



belief among primitive people that when the body is returned to 

 " mother earth " it should be placed in the posture it normally had 

 before birth. In house burials at Spruce-tree House the bodies were 

 sometimes extended at full length, which may be interpreted to mean 

 that the dead were not returned to the earth mother. There was no 

 uniformity of posture in the burials at Cliff Palace. 



The work at Cliff Palace was undertaken at too late a day to 

 recover any mummified human remains, all having been previously 

 removed. Xordenskiold's figures and descriptions of desiccated 

 human bodies from other Mesa Verde cliff-dwellings would apply, 

 in a measure, to those from Cliff Palace. 



CONCLUSIONS 



While the work of excavation and repair of Cliff Palace described 

 in the preceding pages adds nothing distinctly new to existing knowl- 

 edge of cliff-dweller culture, it renders a more comprehensive idea 

 of the conditions of life in one of the largest of these interesting 

 ancient settlements in our Southwest. Of all the questions that pre- 

 sent themselves after a work of this kind, perhaps the most impor- 

 tant, from a scientific point of view, is. What relation exists between 

 the culture of Cliff Palace and that of the neighboring pueblos? 

 Directly across the canyon, in full view of Cliff Palace, there is a 

 typical pueblo ruin, almost identical in character with many others 

 scattered throughout the Southwest, some of which are known to 

 have been inhabited in historic times by ancestors of Pueblo peoples 

 still living. The contribution here made to the knowledge of cliff- 

 dwelling culture will, it is hoped, shed light on the question. In 

 what way are the cliff-dwellers and the Pueblos related? 



The relationship in culture of the former people of Cliff Palace 

 to those of the large pueblo ruin on the mesa across the canyon is 

 most instructive. How were the inhabitants of these two settlements 

 related ; and were the two sites inhabited simultaneously, or is the 

 pueblo ruin older than Cliff Palace? So far as the culture of the 

 inhabitants of the two is known (and knowledge of the pueblo is 

 scant), the two settlements were synchronously inhabited, but noth- 

 ing in them gives indication of the period of their occupancy. These 

 (piestions can be settled only by the excavation of this pueblo or of 

 some similar ruin on the plateau." Norclenskiold, with the data 



" A true comparison of the mesa habitation and ttie cliff-dwelUng can be made only by 

 renewed work on the former, which is now little more than a huge pile of fallen walls. 

 Present indications show a greater antiquity of the mesa ruin, the site of which af- 

 forded more adequate protection. On this supposition the mesa ruins would be con- 

 sidered older than the cliff ruins, and those of the valley the most ancient. If the ruins 

 in M<>nt(>zuma valley are the oldest, we can not suppose that the culture originated in the 

 cliffs and spread to the valley. The circular subterranean kiva bears indication of having 

 originated in valleys rather than in caverns. Nordenskiold does not mention the large 

 ruin on the bluff west of Cliff T'alace. 



