pewkes] PREHTSTORTO VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 



39 



It is constructed of logs reaching from one side of the cave to the 

 other supporting a floor of flat si ones and adobe. Its elevated 

 situation would necessitate for entrance either holes cut in the cliffs 

 or ladders. 



UNIT-TYPE HOUSES IX CAVES 



In subsequent pages the author will describe a ruin called the 

 Unit-type House, situated in the open on the north rim of Square 

 Tower Canyon. A similar type of unit-type house is found in a 

 cave in Sand Canyon. The reader's attention may first be called 

 to the definition of a unit type, which is a building composed of a 

 circular kiva, with mural banquettes and pedestals supporting a 

 vaulted roof, with ventilator, reflector, and generally a ceremonial 

 opening near a central fire hole in the floor. This kiva (fig. 5) is 

 generally embedded in or surrounded by rectangular rooms. Tlio 



VjL-yr^df'iv *?*?« "a 1 ijif f •&aY*Z+* ********* ' 



Fig. 5. — Ground plan of Unit-type nouse in cave. 



single-unit type has one kiva with several surrounding rooms; the so- 

 called pure type is composed of these units united. 



In an almost inaccessible cave (pi. 5, V) in Sand Canyon a few 

 miles from the McElmo road near the scaffold already mentioned 

 there is a cliff ruin, so far as known the first described single-unit 

 house in a cave. It covers the whole floor of the cave (fig. 5) and 

 its walls are considerably dilapidated, but the kiva shows this instruc- 

 tive condition: The walls are double, one inside the other, with two 

 sets of pedestals, the outer of which are very much blackened with 

 smoke of constant fires; the inner fresh and untarnished, evidently of 

 late construction. A similar double-walled kiva known as "Kiva A" 

 exists in Spruce- tree House, as described in the author's account of 

 that ruin. 1 On the perpendicular wall of the precipice at the right 

 hand of the ruin in the cave above mentioned are several pietographs 

 shown in plate 7, c. 



i Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Spruce-tree nouse. Bull. 41, Bur. Amer. Ethn., 1909. 



