■64 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL, "] 2 



ARCHEOLOGICAL FIELD-WORK ON THE MESA VERDE 

 NATIONAL PARK 



During May and June, 1921, Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, Chief of the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology, continued his archeological work of 

 former years on the Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, the brief 

 season's field-work being financed with a small allotment from the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology. 



The site chosen for field operations was the Mummy Lake cluster 

 of mounds, a typical prehistoric southwestern village situated 4^ miles 

 north of Spruce-tree Camp. One of the mounds in this village, 

 excavated in 1916, is now known as Far View House. The surface 

 contours of the remaining mounds differ somewhat, indicating that the 

 buildings hidden in them have dift'erent forms, but excavations are 

 necessary to determine the use of these buildings. It has long been 

 known that some of the prehistoric pueblos of our southwest had 

 rooms called kivas for religious purposes, but only within the last 

 year has it been recognized that there was sometimes added to these 

 kivas a complex of rooms, also for ceremonial purposes. Several of 

 these specialized religious structures have already been described, but 

 there remain many other mysterious mounds beckoning the archeol- 

 ogist for excavation and accurate identification. How many dift"erent 

 types of buildings designed solely for ceremonials there are in our 

 southwest, time will reveal. 



The word house {k'l, Hopi) is applied in prehistoric clift'-dwellers' 

 nomenclature to a compact collection of inhabited rooms, secular and 

 religious (fig. 70). A pueblo is such a communal dwelling; but a 

 group of uninhabited rooms, each and all constructed for ceremonial 

 purposes, should bear another name. The discovery of Sun Temple 

 introduced archeologists to a type of southwestern buildings not in- 

 tended for habitations, but for a specific communal purpose supposed 

 to be religious. Fire Temple, on the Mesa Verde, is also regarded as 

 such a specialized building and is likewise believed to have had a 

 religious use. Similarly. Cedar-tree Tower and Far \'iew Tower 

 were not habitations but communal buildings with a religious function. 

 The " Lower House " at Yucca House National Monument, the 

 *' Great Kiva " at Aztec, and similar great kivas situated in the Chaco 

 Canyon and elsewhere on tributaries of the San Juan River morpho- 

 logically belong to this type. All these may be called temples. There 

 are many large buildings never inhabited but now in ruins scattered 

 over the southwest, the use of which is doubtful. Among these are 



