HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



istics of the house remains contained within them, but also in the 

 expectation of obtaining a representative series of the minor artifacts 

 associated with such remains. The principal results of those excava- 

 tions will be set forth in a report not yet published; nevertheless it 

 seems desirable, for the purposes of the present paper, to consider 

 briefly a few of the observations made in one mound, which may be 

 accepted as more or less typical of similar house sites in neighboring 

 valleys. 



On the outskirts of Beaver City, in Beaver county, one of several 

 elevations of medium size was completely razed, exposing all the walls 

 which had not been previously effaced, as well as certain evidences 

 of other, less permanent habitations. In all, fifteen rectangular rooms 

 were uncovered, in addition to a circular structure which bore several 

 similarities to the round kivas of the San Juan drainage. Four dis- 

 tinct levels of occupancy were evident, each marked by a well-defined 

 court floor, fireplaces, and at least portions of walls. The best pre- 

 served dwellings, ten in number, were found upon the lowermost 

 level ; only four of these were connected by contiguous walls. Several 

 first-level houses contained small bins, or box-like receptacles, built 

 against inner walls; one, in addition to a bin, possessed an olla- 

 shaped, subterranean chamber, supposedly for storage purposes. 



The walls in each of these several rooms or houses were made en- 

 tirely of adobe mud, with no indication that foreign materials of any 

 sort had been intentionally added during construction. Careful exami- 

 nation of both standing and fallen walls disclosed the fact that each 

 had been formed by forcing together superposed masses of plastic 

 clay, masses which, at the time of placement, differed both in size and 

 in the quality of their constituent parts. The wall faces had been 

 plastered with mud of the same nature as that used in erecting the 

 body of the walls, thus filling and completely concealing the uneven- 

 nesses resulting from the joining of large adobe balls. 



Not the slightest evidence could be found indicating the use of 

 wicker frames or forms of any kind, in the construction of these 

 dwellings. In some instances, to be sure, the walls had been laid in 

 courses, but the occurrence of horizontal layers seems readily ex- 

 plained by the very nature of the material employed. A contractor 

 of today pours a concrete wall between forms which may be removed 

 after the cement has set sufficiently. Forms are necessary because 

 the cohesive properties of concrete are so low that the mixture, while 

 still in a moist condition, is incapable of supporting any considerable 

 weight. Although built without forms, the mud walls of the primitive 

 dwellings near Beaver City were necessarily laid in shallow courses 



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