190 ANTIQUITIES OF SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO _ [5TH. ANN. 33 
the grave’ which may have been shaped by the hand of man was a 
ball about five-eighths of an inch in diameter composed of rounded 
grains of quartz interspersed with patches of some bluish material, 
presumably malachite. 
Ruin No. 17—The ruin east of camp occupied a slight elevation, 
at the southern edge of which the plateau breaks off toward Salt 
Canyon. The encroachment of the slope has carried away the burial 
mound. The building covered an area approximately 200 feet east 
and west by 50 feet north and south (fig. 3). Along the north 
side was a row of 23 chambers, the west end of which swung around 
toward the south. Without exception the rooms of this tier had been 
excavated from a few inches to as much as 2 feet into the natural 
soil. The floor level of no two of them was the same. The majority 
were bounded by rows of large sandstone slabs set on edge (pl. 58), 
but in some instances plaster had been applied directly to the clay 
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walls of the pits. In the corners were the burned butts of heavy 
posts which had served to support the roof. 
One of the rooms had walls of masonry which showed fair skill 
on the part of the builders. In several places bins had been con- 
structed by fencing off a corner with slabs and plastering up the 
joints. Near the east end of the building there was a series of six 
of these receptacles. 
The floor level of the second tier of rooms was invariably higher 
than that of the first. Here very few slabs appeared in the bases of 
the walls. The stumps of poles set into the earth, a row for each 
wall, with mortar 4 to 6 inches thick on each side, marked the boun- 
daries of the chambers. The corner posts were much heavier than 
those which served only to support the plaster. 
As the ruin sloped downward from north to south the floors of 
the rooms of the second tier, which had not been carried down below 
the level of the knoll, were practically at the surface, and the walls 
could not be traced. While the presence of black earth, great quan- 
