None of the towers examined have evidences of mural pilasters to
support a roof or recesses in the walls as in vaulted-roofed kivas.
They are sometimes two stories high, the rafters and flooring resting
on ledges of the inner wall. Lateral entrances are common and windows
are absent.[42]
While the author has found no ruin of the same ground plan as Sun
Temple on the Mesa Verde, D-shaped towers or great houses from several
localities distantly recall this mysterious building, and there may be
an identity in use between Sun Temple and the massive walled structures
of the McElmo and Yellow Jacket; what that use was has not thus far
been determined.[43] If they were constructed for observatories we can
not account for the square tower in the South Fork of Square Tower
Canyon, from which one can not even look down the canyon, much less in
other directions, hemmed in as it is by cliffs. Isolated towers are
often too small for defense; and they show no signs of habitation.
[41] Smithson. Misc. Colls., vol. 68, no. 1, 1917.
[42] Our knowledge of the entrances into kivas of the vaulted-roofed
type is not all that could be desired. Kiva D of Spruce-tree House has
a passageway opening through the floor of an adjacent room, and Kiva A
of Cliff Palace has the same feature. Doctor Prudden has found lateral
entrances from kivas into adjoining rooms in his unit type pueblo. The
majority of cliff-dwellers’ kivas show no evidence of lateral entrances.
[43] Mr. Jackson, op. cit., p. 415, regarded it likely that the towers
were “lookouts or places of refuge for the sheep herders who brought
their sheep or goats up here to graze, just as the Navajos used to and
as the Utes do at the present time.” This explanation is impossible,
for there is no evidence that the builders of the towers had either
sheep or goats, the Navajos and the Utes obtaining both from the
Spaniards.
Are they granaries for storage of corn or places for rites and
ceremonies? Do they combine several functions—observation, defense, and
storage of food? Thus far in studies of more than 30 towers and great
houses not one has been found so well preserved that enough remains
to determine its use, and yet their walls are among the best in all
southwestern ruins. Some future archeologist may find objects in towers
that will demonstrate their function, but from our present knowledge no
theory of their use yet suggested is satisfactory.
It is impossible from the data available to determine the century in
which the towers and great houses of the region were constructed. Thus
far a few were seen with great trees growing in them, but none with
roofs; the state of preservation of the walls does not point to a great
age. Several writers have regarded them as occupied subsequently to
the Spanish conquest, while others have ascribed to them a very remote
antiquity. It can hardly be questioned that the cliff-dwellers, and by
inference their kindred, the tower builders, were superior in their
arts to modern Pueblos.
It is important to determine first of all the forms of these towers;
whether their ground plans are circular, oval, square, rectangular, or
semicircular. The northern wall of many is uniformly curved and the
last to fall, which might lead to the belief that the southern side,
generally straight, was poorly made, but one can not determine that by
direct observation, since the latter has fallen. As a matter of fact
the south wall was generally low and straight, over 50 per cent of
the “round” towers being semicircular, D-shaped, or some modification
of that form; but we also have square and rectangular towers. It is
also important to determine whether these had single or multiple
chambers and the arrangement of the rooms in relation to them. This is
especially desirable in towers with concentric compartments.
It is also instructive to know more of the association of towers with
pueblos and cliff-dwellings or to analyze component architectural
features. The tower type often occurs without appended rooms. At Cliff
Palace and Square Tower House it is united with a pueblo village under
cliffs; in Mud Spring Ruin it has a like relation to rooms of a pueblo
in the open. Has its function changed by that union? What use did the
tower serve when isolated and had it the same use when united with
other kinds of rooms in cliff-dwellings and pueblos?
No writer on the prehistoric towers of Colorado and Utah has emphasized
the fact that a large number of these buildings are semicircular or
D-shaped, but it has been taken for granted that the fallen wall on
the south side was curved, rendering the tower circular or oval.[44]
In most cases this wall was the straight side of a D-shaped tower.
Doctor Prudden, who first recognized the importance of a union of
towers with other types of architecture in the McElmo district,
says:[45] “Towers of various forms and heights occasionally form a part
of composite ruins of various types.” He says also: “Several of the
houses are modified by the introduction of a round tower.” And again:
“At the head of a short canyon north of the Alkali, which I have called
Jackson Canyon ... each building consists of an irregular mass of rooms
about 200 feet long, with low towers among them.”
As our studies are morphological, dealing with forms rather than
sites of towers, little attention need be paid to their situation on
bowlders, in cliffs, or at the bottoms of canyons. The majority of the
castellated ruins considered in the following pages are in the proposed
Hovenweep National Monument, but there are others in the main Yellow
Jacket and its other tributaries.
[44] The tower figured by Prudden (Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. v, no. 2,
pl. xviii, fig. 2) as a “round tower” is really semicircular, as shown
in the ground plan (fig. 14) here published.
[45] Ibid., pp. 241, 263, 273.