24 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 74 



and 0.8 m. square. Several shards of very crude pottery were lying 

 near. In digging Pit XV, 0.9 m. below the floor of Room XI, a strip 

 of burned adobe 2 m. long and about ()..5 m. wide was noted. Other 

 burned adobe was found in several places in the wall of earth left 

 between the road and the Western Terrace. Carbon and ash were 

 found in close proximity. In almost every case these burned places 

 were found not on the floor but either under the floor or above in the 

 material filling the room. The first explanation is that they were 

 places where pottery had been fired. 



Decoration. — There is no evidence of any attempt at decoration on 

 the walls of the buildings. Remains of paint, so common at Teoti- 

 huacan, are entirely lacking here. Practically no carved stones were 

 found. 



Wells. — Under Floor A and beginning about 3.7 m. below this 

 floor four wells were found (pi. 2, sees, i-j, k-l).^ The bottom of 

 the lowest (X) is 9.25 m. below Floor A. Z is almost the same 

 depth. W and Y are far less deep and may not have been completed. 

 The grouping of these four wells closely together seems to show that 

 their purpose was the collection of rain water. The water table was 

 not reached even in Well X. It was estimated that the average water 

 level is about 1.5 m. lower than the bottom of the deepest well. The 

 wells were filled with earth and ashes mixed with a large number of 

 shards. A thick bed of ash was found above the mouths of the wells 

 similar to that found in Pits XV and XVI. Here also was a prolific 

 source of pottery. 



A flat stone (0.4 by 0.4 by 0.15 m.) was found 8.6 m. below Floor 

 P' and almost over the mouth of Well X (pi. 2, 23, and sec. i-j, k-l). 

 This stone had a hole in the middle 15 mm. in diameter. The natural 

 explanation of this perforated stone is that it served as a drain for 

 the rain water running into the wells. The difficulty is that the hole 

 seems too small to have served as an outlet for water. The hole may 

 have been used for the entrance of a rope used in drawing water in 

 a bucket from the well. No similar stones were found above any of 

 the other wells. It is difficult to determine the time in the history 

 of the site when these wells were used. There is no doubt that they 

 belong to the pre- Aztec epoch on account of the figurines and shards 

 w^hich they contained. I have placed them in the first period of the 

 Toltec epoch (p. 38) and suggested that they were filled and the bed 

 of ash formed above them when the Main Structure was built. 



Ash deposits. — In three distinct places in the site thick beds of 

 ashes were found in which a large quantity of shards, and in some 

 cases whole pots, were discovered. 



s Batres, as noted in Seler (op. cit., p. 410), found a well at San Juan Teotihuacan 

 measuring 0.9 m. in diameter and 10 m. in depth. It was covered with a semispherical 

 arch of masonry and contained excellent drinlcing water. 



