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Prayer Sticks in Walls of Mummy Cave Tower, Canyon del Muerto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Earl H. Morris
Earl H. Morris*
Affiliation:
Carnegie Institution of Washington, Boulder, Colorado
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Extract

Repair of Mummy Cave Tower, Canyon del Muerto, was begun by the Bureau of American Ethnology and the American Museum of Natural History in 1924 and completed by the National Park Service and Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1932. The final stage consisted of the replacement of the southeast corner, the lower part of which had fallen previous to Mindeleff's study of the structure in 1882, and the rest of it, between that time and my first visit in 1922. As the work of rebuilding neared the top, where less of the masonry had fallen, there was found an alignment of prayer sticks, set vertically in the hearting between the face courses.

The lowest remaining member of the series was a peeled twig, a,2 placed slender end upward and bent into a crook at the tip. Beside the butt of it, 1.5 m. from the top of the wall was the cast of a well-finished stick of larger size, perhaps b, which came from the debris cleared away to provide a new foundation for the corner.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , January 1941 , pp. 227 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1941

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References

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