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| [Katie] Today we almost finished Cougar Cub. We recorded the midden and the sample taken from it, and the extent of the site. There are a lot of drainages at the site. There is a bigger one that flows right through the kiva (backfilled in '83). It is kinda cool cause there are at least 4 hand/toe holds pecked in to the rock face. There are also some petroglyphs pecked into the rock that we didn't see at first between the E and W portions of the site. They are both snake-like shapes and one is man-like and the other has 4 pecked circles next to it. Tucker also found some corn cobs under one of the boulders and some mano and metate frags. [Chelsea] This wall extension leads us to believe that a room abutted Room 4 to the south, which we are no designating as Room 13. This wall extension coming out of the south wall of room 4 appears to be parallel with the westernmost extension beyond the southern wall of room 4. The presence of possible viga holes within Room 4 and 5 in addition to the wall extensions running south of Room 4's southern wall suggests to us that Room 4 may have abutted a two story structure (or more specifically abutted Room 2) and that Room 5 may have abutted a two story structure east of these rooms as well (possibly abutted Room 3)… The masonry of these rooms consists of nicely pecked sandstoine slabs with some mortar, chinking, and some shaping to the slabs. This masonry is distinctly different from the large cobbles utilized for the western wall of Room 6, suggesting that different people were constructing their architecture on this site and the prevalence of wall abutments in the general layout of the roomblocks in the alcove also suggest that the cliff dwellings were not constructed along a general plan and instead constructed at different times. These architectural features coincide with many of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, including Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House, which have a variety of masonry styles and wall abutments. However, these two sites, while Cougar Cub alcove is a smaller site than Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House, one would expect that with the thirteen observed rooms we would observed multiple kivas as at these Mesa Verde sites. Does the presence of only one kiva indicate that the number of families living at Cougar Cub was limited and that the presence of over a dozen rooms is more indicative of storage spaces? This certainly seems like a possibility when we consider Rooms 11 and 7. Room 11 is situated atop a high cliff edge without easy access and limited floor space, indicating it may have been for storage. Additionally, Room 7 appears to be less than one story in heght and the doorway appears to be substantially smaller than the other doorways associated with rooms within the alcove. Could someone have been using this doorway simply to reach into the structure and take goods in and out of it? [Becky] We got there at about the exact same time as Tucker and Ruth who had come to start on the site while Katie, Chelsea, and Seth worked on finishing Cougar Cub [5MT 1690]. The five of us started on 1692 w/ Trevor drawing the rock art and the rest of us flagging. The site was covered with looter holes and there was no definable midden-artifacts just continued down slope. [Trevor] It has me wondering why people right
next to the rock art walls at 1693 were painting pictographs and
not making petroglyphs. Was it simply later inhabitants, or perhaps
earlier, who only liked painting? But I thought that these pictographs
were older than some incisions at 1693, this is a big problem in
chronology. I also wonder whether a painting meant something different,
or perhaps it wasn't supposed to be permanent, but why handprints?
Is it like a signature of who lived there or just their way of passing
the time? I don't think it was purely recreational, but I don't
know, nor will anyone ever for the most part, what its true function
was. |
