(Published in Southwestern Lore, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp.8-33, June 1988
Maps updated for internet use)
INTRODUCTION
Wallace Ruin (5MT6970) is a multistory, multicomponent, pueblo site located near Cortez, Colorado. It is situated in a valley bottom and is one of several sites that make up the Lake View Community. Two other large sites have been recorded as part of this community, the Ida Jean Site (Brisbin 1973) and the Haynie Site (Bradley 1974). Both of theses sites have now been mined for artifacts and little will ever be known of them. Also present are a number of small hamlets, a reservoir, and a Great Kiva. In addition, two non-architectural earth mounds are present southwest of Wallace Ruin that may be road entry features (Thomas Windes 1981, personal communication). The Lake View Community occupies an area where several tributary drainages of Upper McElmo Creek meet.
A preliminary report (Bradley 1974) on the excavations at Wallace Ruin contains additional locational and environmental information. Excavations have been carried out by the author each year since 1969 with the occasional assistance of volunteers. All structures that have been excavated have been assigned feature numbers and will be referred to by these numbers in this report. In addition, Dr. Charles Reher of the University of Wyoming undertook excavations at a small hamlet adjacent to Wallace Ruin. Results of his work are not included in this report.
Since 1969, twenty-nine rooms (14 ground story and 15 second story) and three kivas have been excavated. Basic architectural and material culture analyses have been done concurrently with the excavations and results of these analyses have allowed a substantial revision of the interpretation of the site since the initial report in 1974.
ARCHITECTURE
Four separate building episodes have been identified at Wallace Ruin based on masonry styles, wall abutments, and architectural superposition. The following summary includes all of the architectural units excavated since the initial investigations begun in 1969.
The earliest identified building phase is represented by three rooms, two of which were two stories high (F-14 and F-15), and one possibly three stories high (F-25) (Fig. 2). The masonry style in these rooms is spalled slab style (see Bradley 1974:68, Fig. 5) and quite similar to Style 1 at Pueblo Bonito (Judd 1964:25), as well as to styles described at sites on Mesa Verde (Hayes and Lancaster 1975:81-82; Lister 1965). This style consists of large thin slabs of bifacially shaped sandstone that have been laid in thick layers of mortar. Chinking is common and was produced by pressing the slab-shaping spalls into the wet mud mortar. The chinking was not load bearing. The wall thickness is consistently 30 cm at the top of the ground stories. Wall foundations were simply the lowest sand-stone slabs, which extended two or three courses below the ground story floor. These slabs were made from a soft green sandstone. A single instance of an intramural beam (Lekson 1984:24) was noted in the east half of the south wall of F-25, slightly below the level of the second story floor. All of the walls were standing at least to the top of the ground story, with one of the walls in F-25 standing halfway up the second story. When the dimensions of an intact fallen wall were added to the existing east wall of Feature 25, a total height of 6.9 meters has been estimated.
Ground story floors within these rooms were made of packed adobe with a sandstone spall temper. Second story floors were produced by primary beams spanning the room width and built into the walls topped by secondary beams, which were supported by wall ledges. These were covered by a continuous layer of split juniper shakes, which were in turn covered with a layer of adobe 5 to 10 cm thick. A layer of juniper bark was then laid on the adobe and was covered with another layer of adobe 5 to 10 cm thick.
Ground story floor features included a slab lined hearth in F-15 and a subfloor pit in F-25. Wall features included primary beam holes, a rectangular doorway through the south wall of the ground story of F-25, a T-shaped doorway through the east wall of the ground story of F-15, a T-shaped doorway in the north wall of the second story of F-14, a doorway of undetermined form in the south wall of the second story of F-15, and ventilation holes through the same walls as the doorways.
In addition to the rooms that have been excavated, an estimate of at least six additional ground floor rooms and a kiva is inferred. Various lines of evidence are used to come to this conclusion. These are: (1) it was noted that F-25 may have been three stories high; (2) it is extremely unlikely that this room would have been free-standing and quite probable that it would have been fronted by rooms of one or two stories; (3) a hearth, commonly associated with front rooms (Windes 1984:76-78) was lacking; and (4) the doorway through the south wall was rectangular, while many doors that open into plaza areas (front rooms) a T-shaped (Stephen Lekson 1986, personal communication). It is likely that one or more rooms fronted this one. In addition, spalled slab masonry is present on the surface of the ruin east and south of F-25 indicating at least another row of rooms running north-south. With all excavated rooms and all inferred rooms counted, a total of twenty-one is estimated for this initial building episode: one third story room, ten second story rooms, and ten ground story rooms. A kiva south of these rooms is also postulated based on the site layouts for other excavated sites of this type (Lekson 1984:68).
The spalled-slab masonry style has been assigned to the early Pueblo II period between A.D. 1000 and 1075 in the Mesa Verde area (Hayes and Lancaster 1975:184) and to between A.D. 860 and 960 in the Chaco area (Lekson 1984:90-127). Several cutting dates have been recovered from F-25 from beams derived from the top story ceiling. A total of 11 of these are A.D. 1045 while additional dates of A.D. 1035, 1037, and 1071 were also included. It is unclear at this time whether these dates represent the original construction of F-25 or a remodeling episode. The presence of the latter dates may argue for remodeling. This means that the date of construction could, and probably did, predate A.D. 1045. It is my feeling that Phase I was initiated in the early A.D. 1000's.
The second building episode is represented by a single two story room (F-2). This was made by adding north and west walls to the outside northwest corner of the existing pueblo (Fig. 3). The masonry style in these walls was difficult to see because of a layer of very hard plaster that covered all of the interior walls. The exterior of the west wall was exposed during the excavation of F~7 and a very interesting style was observed. On the surface it closely resembles the banded masonry style described at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon Judd 1964:25); however, it is simple masonry. As this style has not been described at any other site it is difficult to assign a date to it. Based on ceramic associations and its placement in the building sequence, a date of A.D. 1075 to 1100 seems reasonable. A hatchway was located in the southwest quadrant of the second story floor. The only wall features that were located included the primary beam holes in the east and west walls and a probable door through the east one-half of the second story of the south wall. It is unclear if this door was actually part of the initial pueblo (north wall of F-14) or whether it belonged to the building episode represented by F-2. Floor construction techniques were the same as for the initial building episode.
The third building episode at the site accounts for the majority of the architectural units present at Wallace Ruin (Fig. 4). Ten two story rooms have been excavated. Very little variation in the masonry style has been noted in these rooms, and details of wall abutments and bonding clearly indicate that all were built in a short time span. It was during this building episode that the basic form of the final building was produced. The pattern and distribution of the rooms and kivas clearly indicates that the building was constructed to a preplanned form. It is basically U-shaped, has an enclosed plaza, and exhibits near mirror-image symmetry along the north-south central axis. This floor plan is similar to that of Wijiji in Chaco Canyon, which was constructed as a single unit between A.D. 1115 and 1120 (Lekson 1984:224-230).
The organization of the rooms may be observed both by constructional details and by access (Fig. 4). Features 5, 6, 8, and 9 were produced by the internal partitioning of a larger room and were interconnected by doors on the ground and second stories. Ground story access was gained through a second story floor hatchway in the southeast corner of Feature 8 and access to the entire suite of eight rooms could only be gained through a doorway through the second story of the east wall of Feature 8. Nearly the same pattern is observed in Features 18, 19, 26, and 27 except that entry was gained into the suite through a large, floor-level, T-shaped door in the east wall of the ground story of Feature 27.
The first step in the construction of Building Phase 3 walls was the digging of trenches for foundations. These trenches were approximately 50 cm deep and about as wide. The trenches were filled with large chunks of sandstone and abundant mud. Walls were constructed on top of these footings. The masonry is very carefully laid unshaped slabs of sandstone, which had one vertically squared edge. This edge was laid flush with the exterior surface of the wall with any irregular edge(s) on the interior (see Bradley 1974:68, Fig. 4). The same was done with the opposite side of the wall producing a compound masonry (Lekson 1984:21). Areas in the centers of the walls that were not occupied by parts of facing stones were filled up with mortar and small pieces of sandstone. Very thin layers of mortar were placed between the courses, only enough to even out surface irregularities of the building stones. Thin pieces of load-bearing sandstone were often used for chinking. Wall stones were laid so that they overlapped substantially from course to course and often from face to face. This assured very good bonding. These walls are uniformly 50 cm thick and only a small amount of taper has been noted from the base to the tops of walls standing half way up the second story. Corner bonding was achieved in several different ways. One way was to have one wall abutting the other for the height of the ground story and then for them to switch around on the second story. Another was for the walls to be alternately abutted every 5 to 10 courses. Yet another method was for one wall to abut another all the way up with only a single rock extending into it in four or five places for the entire height of the wall. No clear pattern of these wall bonding techniques has yet been noted and any one or several may be present in the same room, with different styles even noted on opposite sides of the same wall.
This masonry style most closely resembles Type IV masonry at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon Judd 1964:25) and may be ascribed to the late Bonito Phase of A.D. 1075-1125. During this same time period, the masonry style in the Mesa Verde area is typically a compound, pecked block form, which carries through to the end of the occupation of the region (Rohn 1977). Wall features include ventilation holes through the exterior walls just below the level of the ground story primary beams (vigas), rectangular doorways through the interior walls, and T-shaped doorways through the plaza-facing walls.
Ground story floors were well made of sandstone tempered adobe and contained occasional floor features such as pits and hearths. Second story floors were also well made with a very consistent constructional sequence. One or two vigas spanned the width of rooms and were built into the walls during wall construction. Smaller beams (latillas) were built into the walls at the end of the rooms in more or less even spacing. These secondary beams had their large ends in the wall and extended across the vigas but seldom reached the far wall. Additional beams were also occasionally laid across the central viga, strengthening the center of the floor. This level was entirely covered with a layer of juniper shakes laid perpendicularly to the latillas. A 5 to 10 cm thick layer of adobe was then placed on the split wood level, followed by a thin layer of juniper bark laid perpendicularly to the shakes. All of this was topped with another layer of adobe. The only floor features found on the second story have been a slab-lined hearth in F-26 and a hatchway in the southeast corner of F-8.
Room uses are not clearly identifiable from artifact assemblages or architectural details in Features 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 17. None of these rooms contained hearths or other evidence of domestic activity. Feature 18 does not contain a hearth; whereas Features 19, 26, and 27, which are interconnected with it, do contain hearths and ovens (Windes 1984:77).
Since these rooms are all two stories high a total of twenty rooms have actually been excavated. In addition to these, two large kivas are known along with an estimated twenty-six additional ground story rooms, which may be doubled for the second story. Although no excavations have occurred on the east side of the pueblo, the height of the rubble mound above the existing ground surface indicates that it is possible that there is at least one line of three story rooms, adding around ten rooms to the total count. This building phase, therefore, included from between seventy-four and eighty-two rooms and two kivas. Tree ring samples have been analyzed from several of the rooms and have yielded non-cutting dates in the middle to late A.D. 1000's and early A.D. 1100's. All were juniper and the number of probable missing rings indicates that construction probably occurred in the first or second decade of the A.D. l l00's (William Robinson 1982, pers. comm.).
Building Phase 4 is represented, to date, by a single key-hole shaped kiva (F-I), a partition wall on the second story of F-27, and two intermural kivas (Fig. 5). In addition, several holes were broken through ground story walls of the previous building phase, a doorway was constructed through the ground story wall between F-18 and F-26, and a number of doorways and ventilation holes were walled up. All of the masonry of this building phase has been simple and was made from whatever blocks were readily available. None of the building blocks exhibits the dimpled surfaces common to the region in the thirteenth century (Rohn 1977). The final construction phase at Cahone House in Hovenweep National Monument and the latest masonry at two of the architectural blocks at Sand Canyon Pueblo (Bradley 1986) also do not include blocks shaped by pecking. Because of this, and the association with Mesa Verde Black-on-white pottery, an estimated date of construction in the middle to late A.D. 1200's is estimated for the final building phase at Wallace Ruin.
CEREMONIAL ARCHITECTURE
Although three thirteenth century kivas have been excavated, there is no direct evidence that they served primarily as ritual structures. It is also not clear that they were primarily domestic. Two other features, interpreted as having served ritual functions, have been found in rooms. The first was a pile of building stones located in the second story floor fall, centrally located along the north wall in F-5. The concentrated nature of this pile of stones and the occurrence of a conical shaped sandstone artifact, sometimes referred to as a maize deity (Cattanach 1980), on top of it indicates that this may represent an altar or shrine that originally rested on the second story floor. Another unusual concentration of construction materials was located in the lower fill of the ground story of F-15. This consisted of a jumble of modeled clay brick-like objects, which did not exhibit any normal constructional impressions of beams or shakes. Instead they were smoothed on one or more faces and/or sides with the remaining sides being broken surfaces. Three of these clay "bricks" are decorated on their surfaces with punctated designs. Two are parallel zig-zag line designs and one is a human figure with turkey track feet and is positioned in a dancing configuration. In addition, an unfired adobe plume holder Judd 1954:293-924) was recovered. Along with this there were several mudware miniature vessel fragments. All of these objects together indicate that they may originally have been part of an alter.