Pit House

Before they built into the cliffs, the Ancient Puebloans built what we now call Pit Houses, like this one at the Step House.  We've seen other pit house ruins at Verde Valley, but none as extensive and well preserved as these.

This one is being partially reconstructed to demonstrate how it was made and make assumptions about how they lived.  You can see similarity to the other pueblos in the shape of the rooms and the troughs and grinding stones.

The park has put this site under a roof to protect and preserve it, but also to allow a partial reconstruction of the roof  like the Ancestral Puebloans would have put over part of the buildings.  The roof will be constructed of logs from the spruce and juniper trees native to the area and mud like the bricks.  

This is what it looks like outside the building at the other original foundations of the pit house site.  These walls are all original.