Miss White, one of the discoverers, stands by the designation. "There's always debate in archeology over definitions," she said. "What else would you call underground features with human remains that have clearly been modified by people to serve as a burial place?"

But no one is disputing the potential significance of the ruins of Casa Malpais.

Dr. Stanford said the pueblo, kiva and catacombs "might give us a whole new look at Mogollon society, its organization and structure and rituals, none of which is well known."

"In terms of ethnohistory," Dr. Hoffman said, "the discoveries are important because they will be filling a gap in our knowledge between the historic Indians, like the Zuni, and the earlier prehistoric people."

Three distinctive prehistoric cultures dominated the American Southwest between the years 300 and 1450. In southern Arizona and northern Mexico lived the Hohokam, whose descendants may include the modern Papagos. Across northern Arizona and New Mexico and into Utah and Colorado, the Anasazi were the master builders of pueblos on the sides of canyon walls. The Mogollon were a mountain people living mainly in central Arizona and New Mexico. The Zuni and Tarhuamar Indians are thought to be their descendants.

Dr. Edward B. Danson, director of the Museum of Northern Arizona at Flagstaff, surveyed the Casa Malpais site in 1948 as part of the Harvard Peabody Museum's Upper Gila expedition. Told of the ruins by local people, he climbed there and found the stone walls of the kiva still standing, the foundations of several dwellings and a staircase leading to the mesa above.

But busy archeologists never gave it a second thought, until the people of Springerville decided they wanted to turn it into a park. Mr. Hohmann's team began systematic excavations at Casa Malpais last summer and expects to continue another year or two. The archeologists have found the stone outlines of as many as 100 rooms in a kind of apartment-building complex where the people lived. Some of the rooms are small, no more than 6 feet by 9, with some others much larger. In one room being excavated, a fireplace is visible in the center and fragments of pottery have been collected. Too Early for Conclusions

Mr. Hohmann said the typical dwelling had walls of boulders and clay mortar and roofs of poles and brush. Wood fragments buried there have enabled scientists at the University of Arizona, examining tree rings, to date the construction to as early as 1265. Ceramics indicate that the village must have been abandoned soon after 1380.