A hundred feet east of the Fire Temple there are two low caves, one above
the other, in which may have lived those who attended this sanctuary. The
ruin is the New Fire House proper, or the habitation of the fire priests
and their families. The rooms in the lower cave were fitted for
habitation, consisting of two, possibly three, circular ceremonial rooms
and a few secular rooms; but the upper cave is destitute of the former.
The large rooms of the upper house look like granaries for the storage of
provisions, although possibly they also were inhabited. In the rear of
the large rooms identified as granaries was found a small room with a
well-preserved human skeleton accompanied with mortuary pottery. One of
these mortuary offerings is a fine mug made of black and white ware
beautifully decorated; a specimen worthy of exhibition with the best in
any museum. In the rear of the cave were three well-constructed grinding
bins, their metates still in place.
The upper house is now approached from the lower by foot holes in the
cliff and a ladder. Evidences of a secondary occupation of one of the
kivas in the lower house appear in a wall of crude masonry without
mortar, part of a rectangular room built diagonally across the kiva. The
plastering on the rear walls of the lower house is particularly well
preserved. One of the kivas has, in place of a deflector and ventilator
shaft, a small rectangular walled enclosure surrounded by a wall,
recalling structures on the floor of the kivas of Sun Temple. The meaning
of this departure from the prescribed form of ventilator is not apparent.