6 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 81 
was a charred line of fragments of floor material, composed of beams, 
twigs, and adobe, resting on 40 cm. of sand which had drifted into 
the room before the upper floor fell. The charred remains are all 
that is left of the flooring of the first floor. At a point 2.13 m. from 
the south wall, nearly in the center of the room, and above where 
the charred fragments of the first floor touched the ground, was 
another layer of charred remains. Covering this was a hard-packed 
layer of sand with large masses of slaked adobe embedded in it. 
This sand accumulation varied from 3 to 48cm.indepth. Above this 
were the uncharred remains of the roof. (Pl. 2; fig. 2.) 
The same measurements and observations were made in all parts 
of the ruin where we excavated. The floors and roofs had fallen 
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Fic. 2.—Cross section of house débris, showing stratification. 
first into the rooms, sometimes en masse, sometimes only the central 
portions, the corners falling later, as indicated by the broken lines 
of charred beams and floors. Where the corners fell later they 
brought large masses of the side walls with them. I believe that a 
large percentage of the walls fell into the rooms and were afterwards 
washed away as the mound diminished in height. There is too 
much adobe in the rooms to be accounted for by only the floors and 
roofs. All of this accumulation has slaked down and presents a 
very difficult problem in excavation. The only “‘lazy”’ or soft dirt 
encountered was the sand and a little ash accumulation, and this 
was often packed very hard by the superimposed weight of the fallen 
masses above it. 
