HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



The floors of the rooms, which were also the roofs of the rooms below, were 

 of the ordinary pueblo type, employed also today by the American and Mexican 

 population of the region. In the Casa Grande ruin a series of light joists or heavy 

 poles was laid across the shorter side of the room at the time the walls were 

 erected; these poles were 3 to 6 inches in diameter, not selected or laid with 

 unusual care, as the holes in the side walls which mark the places they occupied 

 are seldom in a straight line, and their shape often indicates that the poles were 

 quite crooked. Better executed examples of the same construction are often 

 found in northern ruins. Over the primary series of joists was placed a layer of 

 light poles, iyi to 2 inches in diameter, and over these reeds and coarse grass 

 were spread. The prints of the light poles can still be seen on the walls. The floor 

 or roof was then finished with a heavy coating of clay, trodden down solid and 

 smoothed to a level. A number of blocks of this final floor finish, bearing the 

 impress of the grass and reeds, were found in the middle room. There is usually 

 a setback in the wall at the floor level, but this practice was not followed in all 

 the rooms. 



The position of the floor is well marked in all cases by holes in the wall, into 

 which beams projected sometimes to a depth of 3 feet, and by a peculiar rough- 

 ness of the wall. 



It will be noticed from the above that Mr Mindeleff wrote with 

 a degree of uncertainty and that, although convinced the walls of 

 Casa Grande had not been constructed of bricks molded in wooden 

 frames and afterward built into the wall, he was not absolutely sure 

 that the builders had employed a wattled framework as a form within 

 which the adobe walls were erected. Dr Fewkes, whose investigation 

 of this ruin was concluded about fifteen years after Mindeleff 's re- 

 port was published, is even more dubious regarding the general use of 

 such a framework, expressing his doubt in these words: 1 



In certain walls is found evidence contradicting the theory that they were 

 built by stamping caliche into bottomless baskets or boxes, as generally taught, 

 and as indicated by the joints on the west side of the main ruins. At various places 

 in the walls may still be seen masses of clay patted into shape by human hands, 

 the imprints of which are clear. Some of these masses, which are just large enough 

 to have been handled by one workman, were evidently dumped on the wall and 

 subsequently were not so stamped that they lost their original shape. 



Without attempting at this time to analyze the supposed methods 

 by which the walls of the Casa Grande were constructed, it seems well 

 to note briefly the occurrence of similar structures in adjoining valleys 

 and then turn once more to a consideration of other, more northerly 

 ruins, the adobe walls of which were far less massive than those in the 

 Great Houses of southern Arizona, but which nevertheless may fur- 

 nish a possible solution to the problem of construction existing in the 

 latter. 



1 Fewkes in Twenty-eighth Rep. B. A. E., p. 95. 



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