University of Virginia Library

FOREWORD

The present volume is the fifth of those recording the more technical
results of the National Geographic Society's researches in Chaco
Canyon, northwestern New Mexico. Earlier numbers are:

1. Dating Pueblo Bonito and other ruins of the Southwest, by A. E. Douglass.
National Geographic Society Contr. Techn. Pap., Pueblo Bonito Ser., No. 1,
1935.

2. The geology of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in relation to the life and
remains of the prehistoric peoples of Pueblo Bonito, by Kirk Bryan. Smithsonian
Misc. Coll., vol. 122, No. 7, 1954.

3. The material culture of Pueblo Bonito, by Neil M. Judd, with Appendix:
Canid remains from Pueblo Bonito and Pueblo del Arroyo, by Glover M. Allen.
Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 124, 1954.

4. Pueblo del Arroyo, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, by Neil M. Judd. Smithsonian
Misc. Coll., vol. 138, No. 1, 1959.

A quarter century spans the publication period of these four
titles, but they did not stand alone. Annual progress reports appeared
in "Explorations and Field-work of the Smithsonian Institution,"
1921-1928; fuller statements were offered from time to time
in divers scientific journals by Bryan, Douglass, and the present
writer; and five popular articles appeared in the National Geographic
Magazine, as follows:

1. A new National Geographic Society expedition. Anonymous, June 1921,
pp. 637-643.

2. The Pueblo Bonito Expedition of the National Geographic Society, by Neil
M. Judd, March 1922, pp. 322-331.

3. Pueblo Bonito, the Ancient, by Neil M. Judd, July 1923, p. 99-108.

4. Everyday life in Pueblo Bonito, by Neil M. Judd, September 1925, pp. 227262.

5. The secret of the Southwest solved by talkative tree-rings, by A. E.
Douglass, December 1929, pp. 736-770.

Not all our data have been presented. At his request, I granted
Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., permission to include in his 1927 doctoral
dissertation at Harvard University the pottery data he had
assembled while in the employ of the Pueblo Bonito Expeditions
but with the proviso, in keeping with my commitment to the National
Geographic Society, that those data would not be made public until a

report on the Chaco Canyon phase of his subject was available for
publication. As yet there has been no such report. Dr. T. Dale Stewart
of the U. S. National Museum has examined for the Pueblo Bonito
Expeditions all skeletal material collected at Pueblo Bonito by the
National Geographic Society and by the Hyde Expeditions. Completion
of our study of Chaco Canyon small-house sites, including
those examined by the late Monroe Amsden under special permit from
the Department of the Interior, now seems unlikely.

Admittedly, the present volume appears a long while after conclusion
of field-work at Pueblo Bonito. Nevertheless, most of our findings
have been readily accessible and have been utilized by other
students. Dr. A. E. Douglass's now widely used tree-ring calendar
received its first real impetus at Pueblo Bonito in 1922 and attained
its goal, the dating of Pueblo Bonito, 7 years later at Show Low, Ariz.
Since 1929 that calendar, greatly expanded by former Douglass students
and others, has become a principal dependence of archeological
research in the Southwest.

Dr. Kirk Bryan's 1924 and 1925 studies of sedimentation in Chaco
Canyon have become the model for similar studies elsewhere.
Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., has drawn upon his 1925-1926 observations
to illuminate each of his important publications on Southwestern
archeology, 1930-1940, and these, in turn, have been the
reliance of other archeologists. Our groundplan of Pueblo Bonito,
lent for display at the Chaco Canyon National Monument, was reproduced
by Gladwin (1945, fig. 17) and by McNitt (1957, p. 342).
Only the details of our architectural investigations remained for
presentation.

As previously explained (Judd, 1954, vii), the Chaco Canyon
explorations of the National Geographic Society began with a 1920
reconnaissance which I was invited to lead. Upon conclusion of that
survey a report was submitted to the Society's Committee on Research,
Dr. Frederick V. Coville, chairman, and the Pueblo Bonito Expeditions
were initiated the following year, 1921.

Pueblo Bonito was chosen for intensive investigation because it
was judged both the oldest and largest of the 15 major Chaco Canyon
ruins. Despite previous partial excavation by the Hyde Exploring
Expeditions from the American Museum of Natural History, Pueblo
Bonito was considered most likely to reveal those factors which had
brought about the high Chaco Culture, a principal objective of the
Society's Committee on Research. That this objective was not fully

realized is no reflection upon the Committee or upon my associates
in the field, who were:

                               

	1921	1922	1923	1924	1925	1926	1927
Karl Ruppert	x	x	x	x	x	x
O. C. Havens	x		x	x	x
A. H. Linsley (cook)	x
H. B. Collins, Jr.		x	x	x
George B. Martin		x	x
Robert McFarlane (cook)		x
Cecil Ban (cook)			x
Frans Blom				x
J. B. McNaughton (cook)				x
L. C. Hammond				x	x	x	x
Monroe Amsden					x
Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr.					x	x
George M. McLellan (cook)					x	x	x
Henry B. Roberts						x	x
Dolores Calahan (secretary)							x

Each was a salaried employee; there were no volunteers. That
only one cook returned for a second season is ample evidence, I prefer
to believe, that Chaco Canyon has its limitations as a summer
resort.

Our topographic map of Chaco Canyon, by Capt. R. P. Anderson,
was published in Bryan (1954) with the latter's "post-Bonito channel"
superposed. The final groundplan of Pueblo Bonito and pertinent
diagrams appearing herein result from the 1925 and 1926
surveys of Oscar B. Walsh, C. E., and have been prepared for reproduction
by Harold e. MacEwen. Based upon our excavation data,
Dr. Kenneth J. Conant, formerly of the School of Architecture at
Harvard, executed four drawings depicting Pueblo Bonito as it probably
appeared in its heyday. Except as noted, other illustrations
herein are from National Geographic Society photographs by O. C.
Havens, of Gallup, N. Mex. Mrs. Jeraldine M. Whitmore, of the
National Museum, has typed the final manuscript.

To the officers and staff of the National Geographic Society,
Dr. Melville Bell Grosvenor, president, and to the successive Committees
on Research, I am under great obligation for their unfailing
confidence throughout the Pueblo Bonito Expeditions and subsequently.
To the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society I
gratefully acknowledge a grant-in-aid that provided, in part, for
necessary draftsmanship and clerical assistance. And, finally, to the

Smithsonian Institution, my mentor for more than 50 years, I am
indebted for a corner in which to conclude the present study.