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Preliminary report on a visit to the Navaho National Monument, Arizona cover

Preliminary report on a visit to the Navaho National Monument, Arizona

Chapter 28: RECOMMENDATIONS
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About This Book

The report recounts an archaeological reconnaissance of cliff-dwelling ruins in northern Arizona, documenting approaches to a national monument and providing detailed descriptions of major cliff houses and smaller sites. It examines architectural features such as kiva roof construction, room arrangements, pictographs, and building scaffolds, and inventories pottery, stone implements, and a distinctive cliff-dwellers cradle while including plans and photographic illustrations. The author relates Hopi oral traditions that link particular clans to these ruins, assesses cultural continuities with inhabited pueblos, and closes with recommendations for careful excavation, repair, and further study to clarify prehistoric settlement patterns and migrations.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The writer has the honor to recommend that one of the largest two cliff-dwellings in the Navaho National Monument, either Betatakin or Kitsiel, be excavated, repaired, and preserved as a “type ruin” to illustrate the prehistoric culture of the aborigines of this section of Arizona; also that this work be supplemented by excavation and repair of Inscription House, an ancient cliff-dwelling in West canyon.

He also recommends that one or more of the ruins in West canyon be added to the Navaho National Monument and be permanently protected by the Government.