Clues in Architecture

The people living here shared similar lifestyles and cultures with their Puebloan neighbors to the north, but they followed some different traditions. Excavation revealed that in one room a new room had been built on top of an older one, leaving a partial wall underneath the floor. Their buildings used large boulders for wall foundations, and a large load-bearing wall at the back likely supported another story. Most rooms had two large posts in the center to support one or two roof beams, dividing the roof in half or thirds. Two outside walls were formed from random, unshaped rocks filled with a thick dirt and rubble core and held together with large amounts of mud mortar. These construction methods differed from those used to the north, where people laid horizontal rock courses and ran multiple roof beams from wall to wall without support posts. The excavation of Tuzigoot also showed that massively thick walls built on large foundation rocks tapered as they rose, and that very few doorways were present, indicating that most rooms were entered by ladders through rooftop hatches.

Clarkdale, Arizona · United States