Coyote Village Corn Grinding Stones

Coyote Village is one of six large Ancestral Pueblo ruins sites on the 1 mile Far View Trail in the Chapin Mesa area of Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado.

Coyote Village is an overlooked site on an overlooked trail. Most visitors by-pass the Far View Trail for the spectacular cliff dweller sites, but there aren't many trails where so many easy to view sites are so close together.

One of the features of Coyote Village is the two examples of side by side grinding stones separated by stone partitions. One set of six grinding positions appears to be inside a structure and the other set of three is outside. The other Mesa Verde site where I've seen side by side bins is at Mug House on Wetherill Mesa.

Besides pottery shards, the artifacts a hiker might see at ruins sites are the grinding stones. The slabs are usually called metates and the hand held stone is called the mano. The Chapin Mesa Museum has displays of grinding stones. The Anasazi Heritage Center in nearby Dolores, CO has a display that gives more of a textbook description of the types of metates and manos.

The three styles of metates are basins, troughs, and slabs. The basin is the oldest style with the grinding done in a circular motion. The trough uses a back and forth motion with a one handed or two handed mano stone. The slab style is a flat stone and provides a larger surface area for a one handed or two handed mano. The flat slab is thought to be the most efficient of the three styles.

The mano hand stones are called biscuits if the diameter is less than 3 inches. Larger than 3 inches the biscuit becomes a one handed stone. The two handed stones used with the trough style metates show an upturned wear pattern at the outer edges.
 

Long House on Wetherill Mesa has a display of metates in the back of the alcove next to one of the seep springs and the sandstone ripple marks. This collection appears to be mostly slabs.

Balcony House has a similar small display near the hands and knees tunnel exit.
 

Basin style grinding stones don’t seem to be very common in the museum displays, but the Aztec Ruins in Aztec, New Mexico has what looks like one in a random place near the beginning of the trail.

The Mesa Verde Chapin Mesa Museum has a display of how the bin style grinding works with some corn flour included. A note on the display says the current day Pueblo women still practice hand grinding of corn and they say it is their most difficult and wearisome task.