MiNDELEFF] CAVATE LODGE WATER-PIT. 235 



the pit under consideration precludes use for that purpose; it was 

 probably designed to contaiu water. At the northeastern corner of 

 the principal apartment there is an oblong chamber or storage cist, 

 measuring G feet by 7 feet. 



Connected with the main room by a passageway 2 feet long cut in 

 its eastern wall, there is an almost circular chamber 7 feet in diameter, 

 and this in turn connects with another chamber beyond it by a pas- 

 sageway 2i feet long and less than 2 feet wide. Tlie roofs of the two 

 chambers last mentioned are but 4^ and i feet, respectively, above the 

 floor, and in none of the rooms of this group, except the main apart- 

 ment, are pockets or niches found. The whole group extends back 

 about 45 feet into the bluff. 



BOWLDER-MARKED SITES. 



Withinthelimitsof the region here treated there are many hundreds 

 of sites of structures and groups of rooms now marked only by lines of 

 water-rounded bowlders. As a rule each site was occupied by only one 

 or two rooms, although sometimes the settlement rose to the dignity of a 

 village of considerable size. The rooms were nearly always oblong, 

 similar in size and ground plan to the rooms composing the village 

 ruins already described, but dift'ering in two essential points, viz, char- 

 acter of site and character of the masonry. As a rule these remains are 

 found on and generally near the edge of a low mesa or hill overlooking 

 some area of tillable land, but they are by no means confined to such 

 locations, being often fouud directly on the bottom land, still more fre- 

 quently on the banks of dry washes at the points where they emerge 

 fi-om the hills, and sometimes on little islands or raised areas within 

 the wash where every spring they must have been threatened with 

 overflow or perhaps even overflowed. An examination of many sites 

 leads to the conclusion that permanency was not an element of much 

 weight in their selection. 



Externally these bowlder-marked sites have every appearance of 

 great antiquity, but all the evidence obtainable in regard to them indi- 

 cates that they were connected with and inhabited at the same time as 

 the other ruins in the region in which they are found. They are so 

 much obliterated now, however, that a careful examination fails to 

 determine in some cases whether the site in question was or was not 

 occupied by a room or gi-oup of rooms, and there is a notable dearth 

 of pottery fragments such as are so abundant in the ruins already 

 described. Excavation in a large ruin of this type, however, conducted 

 by some ranchmen living just above Limestone creek, yielded a con- 

 siderable lot of pottery, not differing in kind from the fragments found 

 in stone ruins so far as can be judged from description alone. 



In the southern part of the region here treated bowlder-marked sites 

 are more clearly marked and more easily distinguished than in the 

 northern part, partly perhaps because in that section the normal ground 



