The Coolidge examiner., 1930-06-27

AT RUINS
(By IRWIN HAYDEN
Continued from last week.

Gila river valley in Arizona, | had
mentioned pit-houses. | had seen
them in Nevada in the Pueblo coun-
try. and had read of them and knew
that some of them were round. !
had heard that they had been found
here in this area. and supposed they
were round, as in some other
places. They turned out TO be heCt
angular with rounded corners.
We had expected to find these
pithouses beneath the compound
and did; but we also found them
above the compound or thought
that we did.
II was very interesting to hear
the comments of DR.. Cummings, q.
the University of Arizona ard o.
Odd S. Halseth. concerning these
uppermost pithouses. | discovered
that | had been entirely wrong il
in calling them pithouses; that is,
these two authorities consider thlt
| was wrong. 1t seems that there
are pithouses and houses |hich
look like pithouses but are noi
If | understand the matter, a
genuine pithouse consists OF a PIT
dug in virgin or undi5turbed soil.
with its floor eight inches or two
feet beneath the surface, with Tie
sides plastered with caliche lin
this region) and with a superstruc-
ture of. to us, an undetermined ma
ture. This sort of house is believed
by some to have been commonly
used in an early stage of the dc
velopment of house building, IL the
southwestern part of the United
State of America, in prehistoric
times.
Pithouse-And Pithouses
If now such a pit is dug in rub
bish heap, or in soil which has
filled abandoned houses. or drifted
over abandoned houses, and if the
sides are plastered with caliche,
we have, not pithouse, but a
house which is of the piihouse type
The true pithouse is a pithoust
built when pithouses were the faa
ion, "pithouse" here Is used Iii the
cultural sense. On the other nGnG
a house identical with the true pit
not be called a pithouse, but d
house of the pithouse type. 1t is a
pithouse architecturally, but not
culturally
Now | am not quoting anyone IN
this discussion; | am merely try
ing to state my understanding OF
the difference between the first
houses found by us at the com
pound, that is, the oldest houses,
and the latest, which to me were
quite identical in shape and size
and structure. I'll confess that the
matter is not clear to me at all; but
it seems quite clear to others, wht
have established a certain system
of names, or a certain nomencla-
ture / shall have to conform with
their nomenclature in Cfdcr that
they may understand me, and
them. and it is all perfectly red-
sonable and according to the devel-
opment of systems of names IN
every study of whatsoever kind.
Archaeology Human Subject
There is many historic settle
ment in our land which at one time
was made up of log cabins. This
was the log cabin period. We have
log cabins now in the mountains
and elsewhere, but it is not the los
cabin period Architecturally and
structurally they are all log cabins,
culturally they are not; So there
we have it; and the only excuse |
L; oh
Is that it will indicate one of the
things the archeologist is up
against in his effort to IDENTITY
phenomena and to name them 20
such a way that everybody know
tjust what he is talking about.
We will take so much for grant
ed. / assume that everybody knows
what a potsherd is; and am aston
fshed every now and then TO find
that everyone does not.
Archaeology has to do with hu-
man beings and therefore IS i'll
tensely interesting to most OF us
who are human, or try to De hu-
man. 1t therefore behooves all or
us who talk or write about archie
clogy to do so in way which can
be understood by all who can hear
or read.
Our village sites here in Arizo-
ma, not far from the Gila river,
and the objects which they con-
tain are all that are left, so far
as we know, of the great Hobo
kan, "the vanished ones" Who
ever they were and wherever they
came from and went to, we do
not know. They seem to have
vanished utterly.
Mourning Dove Evident
Yet here in the Gila valley are the
finest descendants of the mesquite
the cfeosote bushes, the several cac-
fuses which flourished here when
our ruins were not ruins, but were
thriving and popnlous villages.
Also. I'll wager, we have the lin
cal descendants of families OF
mourning doves, of hawks and owls,
and of Phainopepla, shining coat.
This bird with coat of FURNISHED
black selects the topmost tw1g Oh
wonder mesquite tree, OF every mes
quite tire, for his perch. His mate
seems larger; she is crested, too,
think, and grey. | suspect she Is
busy lust now with her family, for
her husband is numerically more in