Prehistoric villages, castles, and towers of southwestern Colorado — A Reader’s Guide

Masonry and Mortar: The Evidence of Hands

Fewkes attends closely to how walls were built. At Eroded Bowlder House (Ruin 7), he notes that “where the walls are protected the mortar shows impressions of human hands and at one place there are the indentations of a corncob used by the plasterers to press the mortar between the layers of stone.” This is not a generic observation; it is a forensic detail that links a specific tool—a corncob—to a specific action. The handprints are not merely mentioned; they are evidence of a process, a moment of construction preserved.

Elsewhere, he remarks on the “exceptionally fine masonry” of the central kiva at Unit Type House (Ruin 10), comparing its vaulted roofs to those at Spruce-tree House and Cliff Palace on Mesa Verde. The comparison is not casual; it establishes a regional architectural vocabulary. Fewkes’s descriptions of masonry are never abstract—they are tied to particular ruins, particular walls, particular stones.

Site and Situation: The Logic of Placement

Fewkes repeatedly emphasizes the relationship between a structure and its setting. Eroded Bowlder House is “more remarkable from its site than its structure,” built “in an eroded cave of a bowlder halfway down the talus of the cliff.” The Twin Towers stand “on a rock isolated by a cleft from the adjoining cliff.” Ruin 9 sits “on the south rim at the mouth of the South Fork, just above Ruin 7, a few feet back from the cliff.”

These are not arbitrary locations. Fewkes implies that the builders chose sites for defense, visibility, or access to resources. He notes that a doorway in Ruin 9 “was formerly made difficult of entrance by walls, now fallen, extending from the northeast and northwest angles to the edge of the cliff.” The phrase “made difficult” suggests intentional design. The landscape is not a backdrop; it is an active element in the architecture.

The Unit Type: A Social Hypothesis in Stone

Fewkes’s classification of the “unit type” house—a central kiva embedded in rectangular rooms—carries an interpretive claim. At Ruin 10, he describes “the simplest form of prehistoric pueblo, or the unit of a pure type,” and speculates that “this small pueblo was probably inhabited by one social unit.” The inference is cautious, but it links architectural form to social organization.

He traces this type across the region, citing parallels at Mitchell Spring Ruin, Cannonball Ruin, and sites in Utah. The kiva at Ruin 10, he writes, “is architecturally the same as those with vaulted roofs at Spruce-tree House, Cliff Palace, and Far View House on the Mesa Verde.” The repetition of the form across sites suggests a shared cultural practice. Fewkes does not overstate the claim; he lets the architectural evidence speak, but the implication is clear: these ruins are not random piles of stone but patterned expressions of a lived social order.

Towers and Their Ambiguities

Fewkes devotes a section to towers, but he offers no single explanation for their function. The Twin Towers, with their oval and horseshoe ground plans, are described in terms of their dimensions and doorways, not their purpose. At the top of Eroded Bowlder House, “the débris of fallen walls, suggesting a former tower, but not much remains in place to determine its outlines.” The word “suggesting” is typical of Fewkes’s restraint.

He notes “peepholes with plastered surfaces through the southeast and west walls, which suggest ports” at Ruin 9—again, the language of suggestion rather than assertion. The towers remain enigmatic. Fewkes does not claim they were defensive, ceremonial, or astronomical. He records what is visible: the height of standing walls, the placement of doorways, the presence of rafters indicating a second story. The ambiguity is part of the record, and he lets it stand.

Fewkes’s bulletin is best read as a field notebook made public. It does not synthesize or theorize; it inventories. The reader who wants a narrative of the Pueblo past will need to supply it, but the raw material is here: measurements, ground plans, and the occasional, vivid detail of a handprint in mortar. Approach the text as a catalog of evidence, not a finished story. The ruins themselves, in Fewkes’s telling, remain stubbornly particular, each one a problem rather than a conclusion.

Some evenings I run my hand along Fewkes’s pages and think of the handprints he found pressed in ancient mortar — small, human, lasting. That quiet press of life reminds me of The Historical Child Paidology; The Science of the Child — Edition Insights, another old voice that reads children as patiently as stone reads weather. Neither book shouts; both simply leave their impressions.