This arrangement was seen in
a small cluster on the canyon bottom on the de Chelly.
The small size of available roofing rafters has at Tusayan brought about
a construction of clumsy piers of masonry in a few of the larger rooms,
which support the ends of two sets of main girders, and these in turn
carry series 1, or the main ceiling beams of the roof. The girders are
generally double, an arrangement that has been often employed in ancient
times, as many examples occur among the ruins. The purpose of such
arrangement may have been to admit of the abutment of the ends of series
1, when the members of the latter were laid in contact. In the absence
of squared beams, which seem never to have been used in the old work,
this abutment could only be securely accomplished by the use of double
girders, as suggested in the following diagram, Fig. 38.
[Illustration: Fig. 38. Showing abutment of smaller roof beams over
round girders.]
The final roof covering, composed of clay, is usually laid on very
carefully and firmly, and, when the surface is unbroken, answers fairly
well as a watershed. A slight slope or fall is given to the roof. This
roof subserves every purpose of a front yard to the rooms that open upon
it, and seems to be used exactly like the ground itself. Sheepskins are
stretched and pegged out upon it for tanning or drying, and the
characteristic Zu?i dome-shaped oven is frequently built upon it. In
Zu?i generally upper rooms are provided only with a mud floor, although
occasionally the method of paving with large thin slabs of stone is
adopted.
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