CLIFF-DWELLINGS, the general archaeological term for the habitations of certain primitive peoples, formed by utilizing natural recesses or shallow caverns in the faces of cliffs, some times with more or less modification to adapt them to the re quirements of the buildings. They are to be distinguished from cave-dwellings, which, not necessarily high in cliff walls, usually were or are occupied in their natural state; and from rock shelters, used for temporary shelter, for storage, as lookouts, and sometimes for sacrificial deposits and for burial of the dead. Dry caves have been used as habitations in all parts of the world, some of those in France and Spain dating from the earliest periods of human history. Caves are still inhabited in Tunis and in Central Africa, and as winter habitations by the Tarahumare and other Piman tribes of northern Mexico, who have modified the natural recesses by the addition of masonry windbreaks, storage-bins, etc. A class of cave-dwellers known as Basket makers, of a culture older than that of the cliff-dwellers, lived in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico; and another culture, known as Bluff-dwellers, occupied caves in the Ozark mountains of western Missouri-Arkansas. Other caves, such as Mammoth and Salts caves in Kentucky and Lovelock cave in Nevada, have yielded important artifacts of their primitive occupants.
Eskimo of King island in Bering strait, Alaska, as late at least as 1881, occupied winter houses made by excavating the loose granite rocks to form niches in a steep slope and by walling up the front and sides with stones placed over a driftwood frame work, access being had by a long covered passage leading to an opening in the floor. Ancient cliff-dwellings are found in the States of Chihuahua and Jalisco, Mexico, and especially in Colo rado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, those in the Mesa Verde National park in southwestern Colorado being noted for the excellence of their architecture. It was once believed that the cliff-dwellers of southwestern United States were of a pre-Indian pygmy race, but archaeological study has shown the structures and the objects found in them to be unquestionably of Pueblo origin, contemporaneous with numerous mesa-top and valley ruins, the selection of their sites, mad( accessible only by hand-and-toe holes pecked in the cliff, having been due to hostile pressure. In the Mesa Verde canyons the largest and most noted cliff-dwellings are : Cliff Palace, consisting of about 15o secular rooms and 23 kivas or ceremonial chambers, together with various square and circular towers, all built in a very compact group and following the curving face of the recess for about 30o feet. Spruce-tree house, 216 ft. long and 89 ft. wide (I 14 rooms and 8 kivas), was three storeys high in its loftiest part; its chambers were built round, rectangular, or triangular according to the exigencies of the limited ground space. Balcony house (25 rooms) is named from a wide shelf extending along the front of two of the houses and is built on the projecting floorbeams. There are many other similar dwellings in the Mesa Verde canyons, some of which have been excavated ; and on the summit of the mesa are massive related pueblo-like structures, used perhaps chiefly for ceremonial purposes, as well as many pit-houses. Other important cliff dwellings of Arizona are Casa Blanca in Canyon de Chelly, Mon tezuma castle on Beaver creek of Verde river, and various ex amples (e.g., Betatakin, Kitsil), in the Navaho National monu ment. Cliff-dwellings of this class extend from southern Colorado to central Mexico. Another type, known as cavate lodges, con sists of groups of a few communicating rooms excavated in the friable volcano tuff of the cliffs, in front of which terraced houses of masonry with flat roofs were built. This class is common to the Puye and Rito de los Frijoles areas in northern New Mexico, and occurs also on the Rio Verde in Arizona.
See H. C. Mercer, Hill Caves of Yucatan (Philadelphia, 1896) ; Alice C. Cook, "Aborigines of the Canary Islands," Amer. Anthropologist (vol. II., no. 2, 1900) ; E. W. Nelson, "Eskimo about Bering Strait," 18th Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnology (pt. 1, 1899) ; A. F. Bandelier, Archaeological Inst. Amer. Papers, Amer. ser., pts. iii., iv. (Cambridge, 1890-92) ; W. H. Holmes, Rep. U.S. Geol. Surv. of the Territories for 1876 (i879) ; W. H. Jackson, ibid. 1874 (1876) ; E. A. Mearns, Popular Sci. Mo., vol. 37 (1890) ; C. Mindeleff, in 13th and 16th Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnology (1896-1897) ; F. H. Chapin, Land of the Cliff Dwellers (Boston, 1892) ; G. Nordenskiold, Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, trans. by D. Lloyd Morgan (Stockholm and Chicago, 1893) ; Holmes Anniversary Volume (privately published, Washington, 1916) ; C. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico (2 vols., 5902) ; A. Hrdlicka, Amer. Anthropologist (vol. v., 1903) ; B. Cummings, Bull. Univ. of Utah (vol. iii., 1910) ; J. W. Fewkes, Bull. 41, 5o, 51 and 7o, Bur. Amer. Ethnology (1909-1919) and in various reports of the same Bureau ; A. V. Kidder, Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology (New Haven, 1924, with extended bibliography) ; A. V. Kidder and S. J. Guernsey, Bull. 65, Bur. Amer. Ethnology (1919) ; J. L. Nusbaum, "A Basket-maker Cave in Kane county, Utah" with notes on the artifacts by A. V. Kidder and S. J. Guernsey, Indian Notes and Monogr., Mus. Amer. Indian (Misc. no. 29, 1922) ; Deric Nusbaum, Deric in Mesa Verde (1926, juvenile). (F. W. H.)