The upper ruin contains 10 rooms and has a large room nearly in the center of the cave. The outside front wall of this room is 12 feet high and still has the coating of white gypsum clay plaster with a decorative band of yellow clay for which the ruin was named.
At the western edge of the lower ruin are the partial remains of two well-built kivas. One kiva used to have holes in the floor like those used to support looms in modern Pueblo kivas. The other kiva shows evidence of six layers of plaster. Modern Zuni Indians have a ceremony every 4 years in which they replaster the smoke-stained kiva interior, and this tradition may give some idea of how long this kiva was in use.
A study of the annual growth rings of its roof timbers indicates that most of the lower ruin was built after A.D. 1070.
ANTELOPE HOUSE
Many large ruins are located in the narrow and twisting Canyon del Muerto. One of the biggest is Antelope House, some 5 miles above del Muerto’s junction with Canyon de Chelly. This 40- to 50-room village was built on the stream bank against the base of a cliff which towers nearly 600 feet above it.
Antelope House received its name from four antelopes painted in tan and white, about half life size, high on the cliff nearby. Navajo families living in the canyon believe that these well-executed paintings were done by Dibe Yazhi (Little Sheep), a Navajo artist who lived here in the 1830’s. Other figures in white paint are probably the work of the prehistoric inhabitants of Antelope House.
Because it stands on the river bank, Antelope House has also eroded badly. Yet many of the house walls still rise two and three stories high, and the masonry outlines of dozens of unexcavated rubble-filled rooms and of two kivas can still be seen.
Antelope House in Canyon del Muerto is on the canyon floor under a towering, overhanging cliff.
