|
|
Background
Excavations in 1933-34,
directed by
F. H. H. Roberts, Jr., and Moreau B. C. Chambers, confirmed the
identification
of these small mounds as collapsed houses. The excavations were
extensive--they
lasted 3 months and employed up to 120 men--but the records are sparse
even by the standards of 1934. Roberts implied that as many as 20
houses were excavated. He mapped the wall features of one house [Figure
3], and a photograph [Figure
4] shows the exposed floor of another. Roberts
summarized
the architecture as follows:
The houses were found to have been
round in
outline, with walls of wattle and daub construction…. The wall of each
house was supported by a series of heavy posts, 2 to 3 inches in
diameter,
placed at intervals of approximately 4 feet around the periphery.
The spaces between these upright timbers were filled by panels of cane
strips…. The canes were covered with a thick coating of mud
plaster.
Where indications of an entry or doorway were present they were
invariably
on the east to southeast side. Two of the structures had a
passageway
leading to the doorway. The only other interior feature noted was
that of a shallow, circular fire basin in the center of the hard-packed
floor. A few examples had a raised rim of mud plaster, but most
of
them were merely depressions in the floor. The average house was
16 feet in diameter and, judging from burned posts in a number of
those uncovered, the walls were approximately 8 feet high. The
floor
was on or slightly below the ground level…. The mounds covering the
sites
of many of these structures were merely the result of debris
accumulating
around the fallen walls and roofs. Practically every small mound
had a depression near the center. This feature was due in part, no
doubt,
to the fire basin, but was sufficiently pronounced to suggest that
there
was an opening in the roof above the fireplace.
Roberts also mentions, in his field notes:
House mounds in most cases seem to
be at high
points of ground. Houses built on rises in each case.
Return
to P. Welch's home page
|