One of the large rim-rock ruins may be seen on the left bank of Ruin Canyon in full view from the Old Bluff Road. The ruin is an immense pile of stones perched on the very edge of the rim, with no walls standing above the surface. The most striking feature of this ruin is the cliff-house below, the walls and entrance into which are visible from the road ([pl. 9, b]). It is readily accessible and one of the largest in the country. On either side of the Old Bluff Road from Ruin Canyon to the “Aztec Reservoir” small piles of stone mark the sites of many former buildings of the one-house type which can readily be seen, especially in the sagebrush clearings as the road descends to the Picket corral, the reservoirs, and the McElmo Canyon.
Cannonball Ruin
One of the most instructive ruins of the McElmo Canyon region is situated at the head of Cannonball Canyon, a short distance across the mesa north of the McElmo, at a point nearly opposite the store. This ruin is made up of two separate pueblos facing each other, one of which is known as the northern, the other as the southern pueblo ([pl. 22, b]). Both show castellated chambers and towers, one of which is situated at the bottom of the canyon. The southern pueblo was excavated a few years ago by Mr. S. G. Morley, who published an excellent plan and a good description of it, and made several suggestions regarding additions of new rooms to the kivas which are valuable. Its walls were not protected and are rapidly deteriorating.
This pueblo, as pointed out by Mr. Morley,[28] has 29 secular rooms arranged with little regularity, and 7 circular kivas, belonging to the vaulted-roofed variety. It is a fine example of a composite pueblo of the pure type, in which there are several large kivas. Morley has pointed out a possible sequence in the addition of the different kivas to a preexisting tower and offers an explanation of the chronological steps by which he thinks the aggregation of rooms was brought about. Occasionally we find inserted in the walls of these houses large artificially worked or uncut flat stones, such as the author has mentioned as existing in the walls of the northwest corner of the court of Far View House. This Cyclopean form of masonry is primitive and may be looked upon as a survival of a ruder and more archaic condition best shown in the Montezuma Mesa ruins farther west, a good example of which was described by Jackson.[29]
CIRCULAR RUINS WITH
PERIPHERAL COMPARTMENTS
It has long been recognized that circular ruins in the Southwest differ from rectangular ruins, not only in shape but also in structural features, as relative position and character of kivas. The relation of the ceremonial chambers to the houses, no less than the external forms of the two, at first sight appear to separate them from the pure type.[30] They are more numerous and probably more ancient, as their relative abundance implies.
These circular ruins, in which group is included certain modifications where the curve of one side is replaced (generally on the south) by a straight wall or chord, have several concentric walls; again, they take the form of simple towers with one row of encircling compartments, or they may have a double wall with inclosed compartments.
Many representations of semicircular ruins were found in the region here considered, some of which are of considerable size. The simplest form is well illustrated by the D-shaped building, Horseshoe House, in Hackberry Canyon, a ruin which will be considered later in this article. Other examples occur in the Yellow Jacket, and there are several, as Butte Ruin, Emerson, and Escalante Ruins, in the neighborhood of Dolores.
In contrast to the village type consisting of a number of pueblos clustered together, but separated from each other, where the growth takes place mainly through the union of components, the circular ruin in enlarging its size apparently did so by the addition of new compartments peripherally or like additional rings in exogenous trees. Judging from their frequency, the center of distribution of the circular type lies somewhere in the San Juan culture area. This type does not occur in the Gila Valley or its tributaries, where we have an architectural zone denoting that a people somewhat different in culture from the Pueblos exists, but occurs throughout the “Central Zone,” so called, extending across New Mexico from Colorado as far south as Zuñi. Many additional observations remain to be made before we can adequately define the group known as the circular type and the extent of the area over which it is distributed.
The following examples of this type have been studied by the author: