Fig. 290.—Walled storage cist.
Attached to the main apartment, and sometimes also to the back rooms, there are usually a number of storage cists, differing from the smaller rooms of the cluster only in size. These cists or cubby-holes range in size from a foot to 5 feet in diameter, and are nearly always on a level of the floor, although in some instances they extend below it.
Storage cists are also sometimes excavated in the exterior walls of the cliffs, and occasionally they are partly excavated and partly inclosed by a rough, semicircular wall. An example of the latter type is shown in figure 290.
Plate XXVIII. Cavate Lodge with Walled Front.
As a rule the cavate lodges are set back slightly from the face of the bluff and connected with it by a narrow passageway. Another type, however, and one not uncommon, has no connecting passageway, but instead opens out to the air by a cove or nook in the bluff. This cove was used as the main room and the back rooms opened into it in the usual way by passageways. A number of lodges of this type can be seen in the eastern side of the northern promontory or bluff. Possibly lodges of this type were walled in front, although walled fronts are here exceptional, and some of them at least have been produced by the falling off of the rock above the doorway. The expedient of walling up the front of a shallow cavity, commonly practiced in the San Juan region, while comparatively rare in this vicinity, was known to the dwellers in these cavate lodges. At several points remains of front walls can be seen, and in two instances front walls remain in place. The masonry, however, is in all cases very rough, of the same type as that shown in plate XXVIII.
