traded from the Gulf of California were carved to make bracelets.

Dramatic geometric designs in black, white and red were characteristic of Salado pottery.

27 ORIGINAL CLAY FLOOR. All floors in the village were once smooth, made of adobe clay like this one, but heavy traffic over recent years has destroyed all but this one remnant. Please help us preserve this floor by staying out of the room.

Cross-Section of a floor.
Showing: outer wall; rock; clay floor; shallow firepit; bedrock

At the back of the room the clay floor joins natural bedrock of the cave. Because the cave floor was so irregular, the Indians had to build retaining walls and fill to make a level spot for their homes. Wet clay was spread on the fill to make, when dry, a smooth, level floor.

Note the little clay-lined firepit in the center of the room; it is only about 6 inches deep and 5 across, but provided adequate heat and cooking space.

28 METATE (meh-TAH-tay) and MANO (MAH-no). These Spanish words refer to the stone tools used for grinding dried corn, seeds, mesquite pods, palo verde beans and other foodstuffs. The small, hand-held stone is the mano. We do not know what the Salado called these essential kitchen tools, for their lost language was unwritten.

Imagine the many hours of hard work represented by the deep grooves worn in this hard stone! Try it yourself: kneel and rub the mano back and forth over the trough of the metate; think of doing such work for many hours each day.

Metate and mano.

Can you see the broken metate that was used as a building stone? Look above the barred door to the right, just below the stabilizing beam.

29 SMOKE-BLACKENED WALL. Just as we do spring cleaning, Salado women frequently replastered their little houses with clay. Smoke from cooking and heating fires blackened the wall, but you can still see here hundreds of finger marks left as wet clay was smoothed by hand on the wall.

Finger imprints in plaster.

30 OPEN ROOM. The Indians did not build a roof for this room, because the cave ceiling served the same purpose. Since this large room had good light and ventilation, and offered space protected from the fierce summer sun, it was probably used as a community work area. Two seed grinders, called mortars, are worn into the bench-like bedrock in the back.

A bedrock mortar in the community workroom.

Any of the larger rooms in this village could have been used as meeting rooms or ceremonial chambers, but after damage by early souvenir hunters, no evidence of such use could be found during scientific excavation of the village. Another ruin in the area had a large rectangular room with an altar and other features indicating ceremonial use. Pueblo Indian religion today is deeply threaded