ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT 5 
The roofs of two of the eight kivas in Square Tower 
House were almost intact and show the best specimens of 
aboriginal carpentering in the park. Almost all of the 
original beams are still preserved, and their arrangement 
shows how the aboriginal builders constructed a vaulted 
roof. Especial care was exercised in repairing Square Tower 
House to protect these roofs and preserve the beams in 
place for examination by archeologists and visitors. 
Small house sites are very numerous on top of Mesa 
Verde among the dense growth of cedars, and two of these 
situated above Square Tower House were chosen as types 
of the remainder for excavation. The rooms uncovered on 
these sites may be called earth lodges, and had sunken 
floors with roofs now fallen in but originally constructed of 
logs covered with earth. One of these rooms, called Earth 
Lodge A, was completely excavated, and in order that the 
style of the most ancient habitation on the park might be 
seen by visitors it was protected from the elements by a 
shed. Another form of earth lodge, subterranean and prob- 
ably of later construction, had stone pilasters like a cliff- 
house kiva for the support of a domed roof, but its walls 
were made of adobe plastered in the earth. It shows three 
periods of occupancy: (1) The original excavation, a sub- 
terranean room constructed on the lines of the unit type of 
kiva; (2) its secondary use as a grinding pit, by the intro- 
duction of vertical slabs of stone making three grinding 
mills, the metates of which were in place; and (3) a depression 
filled in with débris containing human skeletons and other 
bones. It may thus have served distinct purposes at 
different times. 
The theoretical importance of Earth Lodge A is that it 
represents not only the archaic type of building of the mesa 
but also resembles those widely distributed habitations of 
nonpueblo tribes. It points to the conclusion that when the 
ancient colonists came to the Mesa Verde they differed only 
slightly from nomadic tribes and that their descendants 
developed the craft of stonemasons long after Earth Lodge 
A was inhabited. 
