"Still inhabited, though now modified, is the Taos Pueblo, Taos, New Mexico, begun before the sixteenth century but showing the traditional method of adobe construction. The pueblo consists of two clusters of houses, each built of sun-dried mud brick, with walls ranging from two feet thick at the bottom to about one foot thick at the top. Each year the walls are still refinished with a new coat of adobe plaster as part of a village ceremony. The rooms are stepped back so that the roofs of the lower units form terraces for those above. The units at ground level and some of those above are entered by doors that originally were quite small and low; access to the upper units is by ladders through holes in the roof. The living quarters are on the top and outside, while the rooms deep within the structure were used for storage of grain. The roofs are made of cedar logs, their ends protruding through the walls; on the logs are mats of branches on which are laid grasses covered with a thick layer of mud and a finishing coat of adobe plaster. It is a massive system of construction but one well suited to the rigors of the climate..."