— 
MINDELEFF] FEATURES OF KIVA CONSTRUCTION ICEL 
Kivas are used principally in the autumn and winter, when the farm- 
ing season is over and the ceremonies and dances take place. It is 
probable, therefore, that each coat of plaster means at least a year in 
the history of the kiva, which would indicate that some of the sites were 
occupied about twenty years. But Mr Frank H. Cushing has observed 
in Zuni a ceremony, part of which is the refinishing of the kiva interior, 
and this occurs only once in four years. This would give a maximum 
occupancy of about eighty years to some of the kivas; the ruins as a 
whole would hardly justify an hypothesis of a longer occupancy than 
this. In Tusayan the interior of the kiva is plastered by the women 
once every year at the feast of Powamu (the fructifying moon). 
The kivas are seldom true circles, being usually elongated one way 
or another. Some instances occur which are rectangular, such as the 
room shown in figure 19, which was apparently a kiva. Nordenskiéld! 
illustrates an example which appears to have been oval by design, 
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Fic. 72—Kiva decoration in white. 
differing in this respect from anything found in De Chelly. Most of 
the kivas have an interior bench, about a foot wide and 2 feet above the 
floor. This bench is sometimes continuous around the whole interior, 
sometimes extends only partly around. Wherever the chimney-like 
structure is attached to a kiva the bench is omitted or broken at that 
point. The kiva wall on the floor level is always continuous except 
before the chimney-like feature. The most elaborate system of benches 
and buttresses seen in the canyon occurs in the principal kiva of the 
Mummy Caveruin. This is shown in the ground plan, figure 16, and 
also.in figures 82 and 85. In the ruins of the Mancos, Nordenskiéld 
found kivas in which this feature is carried much further. He illus- 
trates? an example with a complete bench regularly divided into six 
equal parts by an equal number of buttresses or pillars (properly 
pilasters) extending out flush with the front of the bench. This is said 

‘Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, p. 63, tig. 36. 
* Loc. cit., figs. 6 and 7, pp. 15-16. 
16 HrA—12 
