42 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [toll, to 



a circular tower with annexed great houses, all constructed of well- 

 dressed stones, the masonry in the walls showing on one side of the 

 tower. No excavations, however, have yet been undertaken in Hill 

 Canyon Ruins, and it is not known whether the unit type of kiva is 

 found there, but the combination of great houses and towers is evi- 

 dent from the ground plans elsewhere published. 1 



The feature of the towers in Hill Canyon is the clustering into 

 groups, somewhat recalling the condition in Cannonball Ruin, where, 

 however, they are united. In the Eight Mile Ruin one of the towers 

 is separated from the remaining houses. 



Several towers have accompanying circular depressions with 

 surrounding mounds. This association can well be seen in Holmes 

 Tower on the Mancos Canyon and in Davis Tower and one or two 

 others on the Yellow Jacket. These depressions, sometimes called 

 reservoirs, have never been excavated, but from what is known of 

 rooms accompanying towers in the western section of Hovenweep 

 Castle it may be that they indicate kivas. Some towers have no 

 sunken area in the immediate vicinity, especially those moimted on 

 rocky points or perched on bowlders. At Cannonball Ruin there 

 are several kivas side by side in one section and towering above them 

 is a massive walled tower and other rooms. 



STRUCTURE OF TOWERS 



None of the towers examined have evidences of mural pilasters 

 to support a roof or recesses in the walls as in vaulted-roofed kivas. 

 They are sometimes two stories high, the rafters and flooring resting 

 on ledges of the inner wall. Lateral entrances are common and 

 windows are absent. 2 



While the author has found no ruin of the same ground plan as Sun 

 Temple on the Mesa Verde, D-shaped towers or great houses from 

 several localities distantly recall this mysterious building, and there 

 may be an identity in use between Sun Temple and the massive- 

 walled structures of the McElmo and Yellow Jacket; what that use 

 was has not thus far been determined. 3 If they were constructed for 

 observatories we can not account for the square tower in the South 

 Fork of Square Tower Canyon, from which one can not even look 

 down the canyon, much less in other directions, hemmed in as it is 



i Smithson. Misc. Colls., vol. 68, no. 1, 1917. 



2 Our knowledge of the entrances into kivas of the vaulted-roofed type is not all that could be desired. 

 Kiva D of Spruce-tree House has a passageway opening through the floor of an adjacent room, and Kiva A 

 of Cliff Palace has the same feature Doctor Pruddcn has found lateral entrances from kivas into adjoin- 

 ing rooms in his unit-type pueblo. The majority of cliff-dwellers' kivas show no evidence of lateral en- 

 trances. 



3 Mr. Jackson, op. cit., p. 415, regarded it likely that the towers were "lookouts or places of refuge for 

 the sheep herders who brought their sheep or goats up hero to graze, just as theNavajos used to and as 

 the Utes do at the present time." This explanation is impossible, for there is no evidence that the 

 builder': of the towers had cither sheep or goats, the Navajos and the Utes obtaining both from the 

 Spaniards. 



