As the word is used in this report, a village is a cluster of houses
separated from each other, each building constructed on the same plan,
viz, a circular ceremonial room or kiva with mural banquettes and
pilasters for the support of a vaulted roof, inclosed in rectangular
rooms. When there is one kiva and surrounding angular rooms we adopt
the name “unit type.” When, as in the larger mounds, there are
indications of several kivas or unit types consolidated—the size
being in direct proportion to the number—we speak of the building as
belonging to the “pure type.” Doctor Prudden, who first pointed out the
characteristics of the “unit type,”[12] has shown its wide distribution
in the McElmo district. The Mummy Lake village has 16 mounds indicating
houses. Far View House, one of these houses, is made up of an
aggregation of four unit types and hence belongs to the author’s “pure
type.”
[12] The situation of the cemetery, one of the characters of Prudden’s
“unit type,” appears constant in one kiva buildings, but is variable
in the pure type, and, as shown in the author’s application of the
unit type to the crowded condition in Spruce-tree House and other
cliff-houses, does not occur in the same position as in pueblos of the
pure type open to the sky.
While villages similar to the Mummy Lake group, in the valleys near
Mesa Verde, have individual variations, the essential features are
the same, as will appear in the following descriptions of Surouaro,
and ruins at Goodman Point, Mud Spring, Aztec Spring, and Mitchell
Spring. Commonly, in these villages, one mound predominates in size
over the others, and while rectangular in form, has generally circular
depressions on the surface, recalling conditions at Far View mound
before excavation. These mounds indicate large buildings in blocks,
made up of many unit forms of the pure type, united into compact
structures. One large dominant member of the village recalls those
ruins where the village is consolidated into one community pueblo.
The separation of mounds in the village and their concentration in
the community house may be of chronological importance, although the
relative age of the simple and composite forms can not at present
be determined; but it is important to recognize that the units of
construction in villages and community buildings are identical.