In subsequent pages the author will describe a ruin called the Unit
type House, situated in the open on the north rim of Square Tower
Canyon. A similar type of unit type house is found in a cave in Sand
Canyon. The reader’s attention may first be called to the definition
of a unit type, which is a building composed of a circular kiva,
with mural banquettes and pedestals supporting a vaulted roof, with
ventilator, reflector, and generally a ceremonial opening near a
central fire hole in the floor. This kiva (fig. 5) is generally
embedded in or surrounded by rectangular rooms. The single-unit type
has one kiva with several surrounding rooms; the so-called pure type is
composed of these units united.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.—Ground plan of Unit type House in cave.]
In an almost inaccessible cave (pl. 5, _b_) in Sand Canyon a few miles
from the McElmo road near the scaffold already mentioned there is a
cliff ruin, so far as known the first described single-unit house in
a cave. It covers the whole floor of the cave (fig. 5) and its walls
are considerably dilapidated, but the kiva shows this instructive
condition: The walls are double, one inside the other, with two sets
of pedestals, the outer of which are very much blackened with smoke
of constant fires; the inner fresh and untarnished, evidently of late
construction. A similar double-walled kiva known as “Kiva A” exists
in Spruce-tree House, as described in the author’s account of that
ruin.[39] On the perpendicular wall of the precipice at the right hand
of the ruin in the cave above mentioned are several pictographs shown
in plate 7, _c_.
[39] Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Spruce-tree House.
Bull. 41, Bur. Amer. Ethn., 1909.
The rectangular rooms about the kiva are in places excavated out of the
cliffs, but show standing walls on the front. These were not, however,
constructed with the same care as those of the kiva.
The cliff-house in Hackberry Canyon (pl. 9, _a_) is one of the most
instructive. It lies below Horseshoe House and appears to be a second
example of a unit type kiva and surrounding rooms.
The cliff-dwelling in Ruin Canyon[40] visible across the canyon from
the Old Bluff City Road is well preserved. On the rim of the canyon are
piles of stone indicating a very large pueblo, with surface circular
depressions indicating unit type houses.
[40] The name Ruin Canyon, often applied also to Square Tower Canyon,
is retained for this canyon.