Site Structures and Activity Areas

Surface Structures

 

Thirteen surface structures were excavated at the Late Anasazi sites. Eleven of these were at two
Mesa Verde sites: 5MT5498 (10 rooms) and 5MT18020 (one room). The remaining two were at one
Aztec site, LA46147.

At 5MT5498, the ten rooms were
located in two separate
roomblocks. The rooms were
fairly small, averaging 4.6 sq m of
floor space, and were built of sim-
ple masonry construction, using
unshaped sandstone blocks. At
least half of the rooms were prob-
ably used mostly for storage and
contained no features. The other
half also may have been used for
storage but contained features
and artifacts which suggest that
part of the time they were used
for other domestic purposes.

At LA46147, two surface rooms
were excavated. One was a col-
lapsed jacal wall located west of
the kiva. The other was located
west of and below the butte top.
This structure was built against
the vertical cliff face and incorpo-
rated a crevasse in the rock for
access to the butte top, as can be
seen from this photo.