I’ve been enjoying Desert Drifter’s videos of cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, pictographs, and artifacts in the SW, often in undisclosed locations to keep the scavengers from stealing artifacts.
I’m always afraid for their lives!
Why has that mud between the log and the rock not fallen off?
I see little rocks in the mud, I’m guessing they used river clay, and what else?
This is an outside wall and while sheltered, the wind hits it and I’m sure it gets wet during rain storms. This looks like recent work.
Did someone date the wood? There are no termites? It looks exactly like my fence posts.
Spring is always super busy here, but I’ll try to research these ancient building techniques, somebody must have analyzed the mud.
The historic preservation folks definitely repoint masonry cliff dwellings all across the west. usually they take a sample of the existing mortar and send it to a lab, then try to replicate it exactly. I’ve heard that at some sites the fingerprints from the masons indicated that women were building the structures while it is thought men hauled the material to site. It’s really impressive to see the stone structures in the canyon. The most common building stones in grand canyon are sandstone and limestone, as those cliff forming rock formations are where you tend to find the sheltered alcoves and overhangs that are good to build structures under.
Thanks, you seem to know something about that.
I’m aware they restored Montezuma castle and other famous structures open to tourists. So now I have more questions:
When did they start repointing?
How often?
Did they also rebuild collapsed walls?
Where do we find the lab analysis?
Don’t they keep RECORDS with pictures of before and after?
Who are “they?”
I should try more searches, or maybe contact NPS. It can’t be a state secret how these structures were built.