It seems to the author that the large block of buildings is simply a congeries of unit types the structure of one of which is indicated by the small buildings excavated by Doctor Prudden, and that structurally there is the same condition in it as in the pueblo ruins of Montezuma Valley, a conclusion to which the several artifacts mentioned and figured by Doctor Prudden also point.
The same holds true of Bug Point Ruin, a few miles away, also excavated and described by Doctor Prudden. Here also excavation of a small mound shows the unit type, and while no one has yet opened the larger mound or pueblo, superficial evidences indicate that it also is a complex of many unit types joined together. Until more facts are available the relative age of the small unit types as compared to the large pueblo can not be definitely stated, but there is little reason to doubt that they are contemporaneous, and nothing to support the belief that they do not indicate the same culture.
Acmen Ruin
Following the Old Bluff Road and leaving it about 5 miles west of Acmen post office, one comes to a low canyon beyond Pigge ranch. The heaps of stone or large mounds cover an area of about 10 acres, the largest being about 15 feet high. East of this is a circular depression surrounded by stones, indicating either a reservoir or a ruined building.
The top of the highest mound ([pl. 3, a])—no walls stand above the surface—is depressed like mounds of the Mummy Lake group on the Mesa Verde. This depression probably indicates a circular kiva embedded in square walls, the masonry of which so far as can be judged superficially is not very fine. There are many smaller mounds in the vicinity and evidences of cemeteries on the south, east, and west sides, where there are evidences of desultory digging; fragments of pottery are numerous.
These mounds indicate a considerable village which would well repay excavation, as shown by the numerous specimens of corrugated, black and white, and red pottery in the Pigge collection, made in a small mound near the Pigge ranch.
The specimens in this collection present few features different from those indicated by the fragments of pottery picked up on the larger mounds a mile west of the site where they were excavated. They are the same as shards from the mounds in the McElmo region.
Oak Spring House
About 15 miles southwest of Dove Creek on Monument Canyon there is a good spring called Oak Spring, near which are several piles of stones indicating former buildings, the largest of which, about a quarter of a mile away, has a central depression with surrounding walls now covered with rock or buried in soil or blown sand. Very large piñon trees grow on top of the highest walls of this ruin, the general features of which recall those at Bug Spring, though their size is considerably less. In the surface of rock above the spring there are numerous potholes of small size. One of these, 4 feet deep and about 18 feet in diameter, is almost perfectly circular and has some signs of having been deepened artificially. It holds water much of the time and was undoubtedly a source of water supply to the aborigines, as it now is to stock in that neighborhood.