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This season's explorations confirmed the suggestion, for, near the Pillar Room at the west side of the Central Court, there were discovered two large cists, which had been used for the storage of objects connected with the palace cult.
Although capable of holding more than ten gallons, this huge pot was intended to be carried on the back and shoulders by means of a rope passing through the handles and around the nubbin. Saavedra said that he had found near his house several bottle-shaped cists lined with stones, with a flat stone on top evidently ancient graves. The bones had entirely disappeared.
A large proportion of the cists found in De Chelly were burial places and of Navaho origin. As a rule they are far more difficult of access than the ruins. There is no evidence of the influence of the defensive motive. Defensive works on the approaches to sites are never found, nor can such influence be detected in the arrangement of openings, in the character of masonry, or in the ground plan.
The walls were of compact cobblestones, rough-laid and stuccoed with adobe and sand. Most of the stucco had come off. Some of the houses had seats, or small sleeping-platforms, built up at one end. Others contained two or three small cells, possibly storerooms, with neither doors nor windows. We found a number of burial cists some square, others rounded lined with small cobblestones.
The pits in the rock are so much worn by atmospheric erosion that the ascent now is very dangerous. The cove or ledge to which they lead is about halfway up the cliff, and on it are a number of cists, one of them still intact, with a doorway. The masonry consists of large slabs of sandstone set on edge, sometimes irregularly one above another, the whole being roughly plastered inside and out.
The rudest walls are much superior to the masonry of the Navaho cists which are found in conjunction with them and which are constructed on a different method.
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