‘ KIDDER-GUERNSEY] ARCHEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN ARIZONA 25 
mound is irregularly circular, about 100 feet in diameter, 4 feet 
high at the center, and becomes thinner toward the peripheries. We 
trenched this deposit thoroughly and found it to be composed of 
dark earth full of potsherds, charcoal, and fragments of animal 
bones. Through it, here and there, are distinct lenses of white ash 
about 1 inch thick and of varying size; between the lenses (verti- 
cally) are layers of clean sand or dark mound earth. At a depth of 
4 feet 6 inches beneath the surface, at the middle, the undisturbed red 
soil was encountered. 
Superficially and in cross-section (the ash-lenses excepted) this 
mound, like that near Ruin 1, has exactly the appearance of the 
burial mounds of Alkali Ridge.t| No skeletons, scattered or burnt 
human bones, or other indications of burials could be found. We 
have observed mounds of this type in the vicinity of Kayenta, in 
Sagi Canyon and its branches, in Sagiotsosi, the lower part of 
Laguna Creek, and in the Chinlee. They are almost always built in 
open and exposed situations, usually at or near the mouths of can- 
yons. We have never seen remains of stone houses, either walls or 
building stones, upon any of them, although the two here described 
are the only ones in which we have gone below the surface. 
Mr. John Wetherill, of Kayenta, whose knowledge of the ruins of 
the San Juan drainage is equaled only by that of his brother Clay- 
ton, believes these mounds to have been the sites of adobe houses 
similar to those described by Cummings from Nitsi Canyon.2 We 
found, however, no trace at all of adobe walls, floors, or fireplaces, 
and it is scarcely conceivable that such remains should have entirely 
disappeared without even leaving red streaks in the earth. At the 
very old adobe ruin of Agua Fria near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where 
no sign of the building can be observed above ground, the interior of 
the mound contains walls and floors in almost perfect. preservation. 
Another instance of the lasting qualities of adobe is shown in Profes- 
sor Cummings’s description of a ruin at Moab, Utah, where adobe 
walls and floor were discovered in a mound containing pottery of a 
very crude and presumably ancient type.? We are inclined to believe, 
therefore, that these mounds were summer residences of the cliff- 
dwelling people, where they lived in perishable brush houses like the 
Navaho summer shelters of to-day. If this were the case, the layers 
of sand between the ash-lenses might be attributed to winter storms. 
The pottery of the Sayodneechee mound and of the mound near 
Ruin 1 is identical with that of the near-by cliff-ruins. 
Cliff-house—One hundred yards from the mound there is a one- 
room house in a little cave at the ground level. Its walls had origi- 
nally reached the roof of the cave, but are now much broken down, 
and the room was full of drift sand and the accumulated refuse of 
1 Kidder, 1910, p. 356. 2Cummings, 1910, p. 27. 3 Cummings, ibid., p. 18. 
