Plate XLVIII. Masonry of Ruin at Mouth of the East Verde.
[Plate XXI] illustrates a type of bowlder masonry which occurs on Clear creek; plate XLVIII shows the masonry of the ruin at the mouth of the East Verde, and [plate XVI] shows that of a ruin at the month of Fossil creek. In all these examples the stone composing the walls was derived either from the bed of an adjacent stream or from the ground on which they were built, and was used without any preparation whatever; yet in the better examples of this type of masonry a fairly good result was obtained by a careful selection of the stones. A still ruder type of masonry sometimes found in connection with village ruins is shown in [figure 290]. This, however, was used only as in the example illustrated, for retaining walls to trails or terraces, or analogous structures.
In a general way it may be stated that the masonry of the village ruins of this region is much inferior to that of the San Juan region, and in its rough and unfinished surfaces, in the use of an inferior material close at hand rather than a better material a short distance away, and in the ignorance on the part of the builders of many constructive devices and expedients employed in the best examples of pueblo masonry, the work of this region may be ranked with that of the Tusayan—in other words, at the lower end of the scale.
Fig. 301.—Walled front cavate lodges.
There is but little masonry about the cavate lodges, and that is rude in character. As elsewhere stated, walled fronts are exceptional in this region, and where they occur the work was done very roughly. Figure 301 shows an example that occurs in the group of cavate lodges already described. It will be noticed that little selection has been exercised in the stones employed, and that an excess of mortar has
been used to fill in the large interstices. [Figure 290] (p. 221), which shows a storage cist attached to the group of cavate lodges, marked D on the map ([plate XXV]), exhibits the same excessive use of adobe or mud plastering. At several other points in the area shown on this map there are short walls, sometimes inside the lodges, sometimes outside. In all cases, however, they are rudely constructed and heavily plastered with mud; in short, the masonry of the cavate lodges exhibits an ignorance fully equal to that of the stone villages, while the execution is, if anything, ruder. It is singular that, notwithstanding the excessive use of mud mortar and mud plastering in the few walls that are found there, such plastering was almost never used on the walls in the