186 ANTIQUITIES OF SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO  [BTH. ANN. 33 
When it was determined that practically everything in the burial 
mound had been destroyed, its excavation was not carried to com- 
pletion. 
Although the explorations in this ruin and its burial mound form 
but one of the steps leading to the conclusions which will be drawn 
at the end of this paper, I shall here mention some of the points 
which should be presented with special emphasis to the mind of the 
reader. The building was a rectangular block of rooms showing no 
evidence of having been more than one story in height. The walls 
consisted of bases of natural earth or of stone slabs plastered together, 
surmounted by a wooden structure. 
The pottery presents many features which differentiate it from that 
of the cliff-dwellings. These differences are of form and color as 
well as of decoration. Fragments of the characteristic coil ware were 
rarely observed, and perhaps 10 per cent of the sherds were of a 
ground color varying from an orange to a deep red. The decorations 
are in general crude in form and execution. All these features will 
be dealt with at length in their proper places. 
Perhaps the most significant fact is that nowhere about the ruin 
were there remains of any structure resembling a kiva. 
Ruins at Site No. 10.—The backbone of the long ridge which limits 
the northern drainage of Johnson Canyon bears an almost continuous 
line of ruins. I followed it from a point somewhat northwest of the 
ruin just described to the head of Lion Canyon, and was rarely ever 
out of sight of fragments of pottery and chips of flint. The ma- 
jority of the remains are elevations from 6 inches to 2 feet higher than 
the level of the ridge marking the sites of small buildings of the 
same type as the one above Mancos Spring; a short distance south of 
most of them are refuse mounds, many of which are larger and 
higher than the mounds marking the ruins themselves. 
Circular depressions surrounded by low, much-eroded banks of 
earth, and varying from a few feet to as much as 50 feet in diameter, 
are of frequent occurrence. It is probable that these depressions are 
the remains not of reservoirs, as many suppose, but of circular pit 
rooms. This conclusion is not based on excavations in that particular 
region, but is drawn from observations on pre-Pueblo ruins situated 
between the San Juan River and the continental divide, 70 miles east 
of the La Plata. In that vicinity, near, and even in the midst of the 
jacal structures, the pit rooms extend from 3 to 6 feet below the 
surface. The plastered clay walls slope outward, and in them at 
nearly regular intervals are to be found the stumps of the heavy 
posts which supported the roof. Near the center of each room is a 
fire pit, and dug into the walls, the bottoms extending somewhat 
below the level of the floor, are receptacles probably analogous in 
function to the bins so common in the later buildings. 
