Signs of Dwellings

Signs of Dwellings. . As you walk through the townsite, look for small earthen mounds similar to the one next to the wooden stake and the other mounds in front of you. These mounds are the remains of wattle-and-daub houses in which most of the town's inhabitants lived., Constantly Building Houses , Houses lasted only about five to ten years, so dwellings were constantly being built (as shown above). Residents placed wooden posts in the ground at four-foot intervals, bent the tops toward the center, and tied them together. They covered the roof with cane thatching or slabs of bark and wind-proofed the splitcane walls with a thin layer of clay., Unintentional Mounds , At first, the floor of a dwelling was even with the exterior ground surface. , Over time, residents wore away the vegetation around the dwelling, and rains washed away some of the soil. , In about five years, the walls collapsed, and the materials eventually piled up on what had been the floor.