NO. 17 



SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I916 



107 



and by the presence of numerous stone disks, in and about the 

 mounds. The roofs were flat and, as in most primitive southwestern 

 habitations, were oftentimes utiHzed as workrooms. 



One of the most interesting- discoveries made during the course 

 of the Parag'onah excavations was that of a circular room which, 

 with similar remains ])reviously discovered in the IJeaver City 

 mounds, tends to establish the use of the kiva, or ceremonial chamber, 

 by the prehistoric house-building peoples of western Utah. The 

 importance of this discovery is quite evident when one recalls that 

 many of the clans composing the modern Pueblo settlements in 

 Arizona and Xew Mexico constantly point to the north as the general 



Fig. 112. — Walls of ancicnl aduljc dwellings exposed at Paragoiiah, Utah, 



in 1916. 



location of their ancestral homes. It is well known that many of 

 these clans once occupied cliff-villages such as those so widely dis- 

 tributed throughout the upper San Juan drainage, villages in which 

 the circular kiva reached its highest development. Students of south- 

 western archeology have labored many years with the prol)lem of the 

 origin of the clift'-dweller culture: the round rooms associated with 

 villages of detached adobe houses in western LTah. together with 

 the artifacts recovered from such houses, suggest that a solution 

 of the problem may yet be found in the unknown canyons north and 

 west of the Rio Colorado. It is earnestly hoped that the reconnois- 

 sance of western Utah may be concluded in the near future in order 

 that the information resulting therefrom mav he used in correlation 



