Tag Archives: Ancestral Pueblo

On Creativity, On Hiking in New Mexico, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, Walking All Day On Stone

Another Stone Circle Mystery

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Not Navajo. Often a stone circle is the foundation of a traditional hogan, but this is in the wrong place–over a lava field, no grazing near–and the “doorway” break faces west, not east.

Puebloan? There are tumbled Ancestral Puebloan structures in the neighborhood, but they’re all square-cornered. Nor can it be a kiva, because it was built right on the sandstone slabs.

The fallen ponderosa that divides it neatly in half is old, but thick lichen says the circle is much, much older.

What was it?

On Creativity, On Hiking in New Mexico, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, Uncategorized, Walking All Day On Stone

Whose House?

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The square-cornered foundation and a couple of scattered sherds say Ancestral Pueblo, but both the vertical orientation and the size of the stones are unusual and impressive. Walls and roof–jacal style, the Southwest version of wattle-and-daub–have long since dissolved into the desert clay.

And another house. I have no idea whose, but the excavator left their claw marks above the doorway.