University of Virginia Library

IV. EXTRAMURAL STRUCTURES

An entirely unexpected discovery at the very beginning of our
Pueblo del Arroyo excavations, in 1923, was a series of small rooms
built against the south side of the ruin. We were clearing away the
wreckage of collapsed upper walls, a preliminary to inauguration of
our plan of operations, when we came upon the series (pl. 2, upper).
There may be two or three more in the group but we were content to
examine the first seven (fig. 2). With other unanticipated structures
west of the village these seven merit special consideration because
they obviously were not part of the original community.

For some unknown reason the architects of Pueblo del Arroyo
designed an unusually long room, over 100 feet in length, in the outer
tier of the south wing. Built of mud and sandstone and with no adequate
strengthening device, the walls of that room began to settle outward
even while under construction. Realizing their mistake and
seeking to correct it as expeditiously as possible, the builders hastily
provided eight or more external buttresses. We know these to have
been early improvisations because each abuts the outward-sloping
wall and agrees with its type of masonry; and each stands upon a
relatively shallow accumulation of constructional waste—the stone
spalls and mortar droppings that are the usual accompaniment of wall
building.

Although they differ somewhat, the eight buttresses we uncovered
average 45 inches long, 15 inches wide, and 57 inches high. Increasing
their length and height and joining their outer ends to form a
succession of small rooms was a perfectly natural thing to do, the
advantageous utilization of readymade features, present and conveniently
spaced. But the added stonework stands in marked contrast
to that of the buttresses. It is narrower and it consists of chance
blocks of sandstone, often unshaped, rarely coursed, and laid in quantities
of mud mortar—a haphazard sort of masonry that indicates a
non-Chaco training. Nevertheless, adequately roofed, those seven
improvised dwellings provided homes for several families—homes
probably in no wise inferior to those the families had previously
occupied.

THE SOUTH ANNEX

Despite the fact that their dimensions and fittings are recorded in
Appendixes B and C, I desire briefly to direct attention to these seven

Fig. 39.—Alterations at northwest corner of Kiva I enclosure.

rooms, both individually and as a group (pl. 2, lower). In floor area
they average about 56 square feet; in ceiling height, 5 feet 3 inches.
In each instance the principal beam or beams lay north and south and
had been seated in the buttressed wall by breaking out proportionate
sections of its masonry veneer. Three beams were utilized in Room 1;
one only in the other six.

Ceiling construction was most clearly illustrated in Room 2. Here
a single main beam, fitted into the north wall 4 feet 5 inches above the
floor, carried 5 secondary east-west timbers. These latter averaged
4 inches in diameter and, with lesser poles between, presumably had
supported a layer of brush or cedar shakes and several inches of adobe.
We took sections from the more promising of the five but, to our disappointment,
their annual growth rings were too uniform for successful
dating. Logs of comparable size had been inserted longitudinally
into the ends of the buttresses on either side of the room and embedded
in the added stonework to serve as wall plates for the southernmost
timbers. Posts as beam props near the weak south wall were
noted in Rooms 2 and 4.

The masonry necessary to complete the seven rooms was, in each
instance, appreciably thinner and less substantial than that of the
buttresses. While these latter vary in thickness from 12 to 18 inches,
the added stonework averages only 10.

In preparation for Room 7, the 10-inch layer of constructional
waste that had accumulated here was first removed. Then the face
of that debris as it underlay the two buttresses was concealed by a
coat of wall plaster that covered the buttress masonry and continued
down to round off with the adobe floor. For Room 3 a deeper excavation
was made since here the floor is 21 inches below ground level.
The individuality of these seven dwellings is further indicated by
the fact that the 3-inch-wide ledge marking floor level in second-story
Rooms 9B-I to 9B-III, next on the north, is 7 feet 3 inches above the
floor of Room 1, 7 feet 7 inches above that in Room 2, but only
6 feet 4 inches above the flooring in Room 4 which had been spread
directly upon the constructional debris.

Mud plaster still adheres to wall masonry in five of the seven rooms,
and this plaster is noticeably smoke stained in three of them, Rooms 5,
6, and 7. Small closets or niches, plastered inside, appear in the north
and east walls, respectively, of Rooms 4 and 5 (pl. 48, left). Fireplaces
are present in all rooms except 2 and 4. Three of these fireplaces
are slab lined; one is lined with clay, and the fifth, with a
combination of masonry and slab fragments on edge.

Fig. 40.—The McElmo Tower and adjacent structures. (From the original
survey by Oscar B. Walsh.)

The fireplace in Room 3 is situated in the northwest corner; it is
lined with slab fragments and was packed with wood ash when found.
In the southwest corner of the room a neatly constructed ventilator,
6½ inches wide by 19 high and 6 inches above the floor, opens through
the south wall to connect with an external, masonry-lined shaft 15
inches deep. The top of this shaft, at ground level, was capped by an
inverted metate that had been worn through and the resultant hole
subsequently enlarged to an oval 7½ by 12 inches (pl. 50, B). Within
the room, against the west wall and midway between ventilator and
fireplace, is a deflector that consists of a thin sandstone slab on end
augmented by a discarded metate braced at the back by two slab fragments
embedded in the floor (pl. 46, B).

A rectangular fireplace occupies the middle floor of Room 1, and a
few inches distant two slightly worn tabular metates on end formed a
protecting screen. This latter was required to deflect drafts created
by the north door and an improvised ventilator, a small irregular hole
broken through the south wall at floor level.

In Room 5 sandstone slabs formed a bin against the south wall to
enclose a very un-Chaco-like metate (pl. 48, right). The mill has a flat
over-all grinding surface 8 inches wide by 19 inches long and was
accompanied by a sandstone mano measuring 7 by 4 inches. The
lower end of the mill rested 2 inches below floor level while the raised
end, where the miller knelt, was 5½ inches above.

Interior doors connected Rooms 4 and 5 and, at one time, 5 and 6.
The former, with a sill height of only 20 inches on its Room 4 side,
was provided with a step formed by a rounded mass of adobe 5 inches
wide and 20 inches long. Also, the door had been reduced to a width
of 17 inches when secondary adobe jambs were added to receive a
doorslab positioned from Room 5. The floor in Room 5 is 2 inches
above that in 4. Outside doors had originally been provided for
Rooms 4 and 6, but that in 6 was subsequently sealed. Entrance
to the other five rooms, therefore, must have been through ceiling
hatchways.

Part of a hatchway was noted in Room 3 where several of the ceiling
timbers had survived. The opening was situated directly above the
deflector that stands at the west end of the room, halfway between
fireplace and ventilator. Here one of the secondary east-west timbers,
22 inches from the south wall, marked the north edge of the passage,
and a pair of 2-inch-diameter poles extending from the timber to the
southwest corner formed its west margin. Two similar poles, upon
and at right angles to the first pair, suggest both the thickness of the

ceiling construction and the depth of the hatchway frame. There was
no other means of entering or leaving Room 3. Presence of this opening
could have had no relationship to the fact that the ceiling was
4 inches lower along its south side.

Room 2 lies between 3 and 1, and potsherds as well as sandstone
chips were used in chinking its outside wall. Several of its lesser
ceiling timbers continue through the west side and into Room 1—evidence
that 2 was completed before the area of Room 1 was enclosed
and roofed. Without lateral doors, Room 2 could have been entered
only through its ceiling, but the location of the hatchway is not apparent
in this instance. A main-beam seating in the north wall 9 feet
10 inches above the floor is that of a second story whose ceiling height
we estimate at 5 feet. Portions of plastered second-story masonry
still stand on both the east and west sides, and in the former there
remains one jamb of a door that had opened upon the flat roof of
Room 3. A door from Room 9B-II likewise gave access to the Room 3
roof. The flat roofs of Pueblo homes have always been utilized for
fair-weather household activities.

Sometime after construction of Room 1 a passage had been broken
through its north wall—the 33-inch-thick wall whose threatened collapse
had prompted erection of the eight buttresses—to connect with
Room 9A. At the opposite end of that exceptionally long room,
before or after partitions were introduced to create Room 10, another
door had been cut through. This provided a passageway from Room
10 to Room 7 or the site 7 now occupies. We know 7 was built later
than Room 6 because the south half of its west wall abuts the outer
southeast corner of 6. We believe the connecting door antedated construction
of 7 because it had been neatly blocked with masonry of the
same type as that on either side—close-fitting, laminate sandstone
masonry for which the builders of Room 7 and its like had no patience.
At the time of this blocking, a 24-inch-deep recess was left on the
Room 10 side, and a substitute door, with steps, was opened immediately
above—an awkward but effective example of replacement illustrated
in our description of Room 10 (p. 15).

A noticeable feature in connection with Rooms 1-7 is their surprisingly
low ceilings. Holes broken in the north-wall masonry for reception
of their main beams vary in height above the floor from 4 feet
5 inches (Room 2) to 5 feet 6 inches (Room 7). Assuming these
beams to have been 6 to 8 inches in diameter, we may estimate ceiling
heights for the series at from about 5 feet to a little over 6. The
adult occupants must have moved habitually in a stooped position

when indoors. Above roof level the butt ends of great 11-inch beams
extend through from Rooms 8-11 to end flush with the outside wall.

Kiva B (fig. 41).—Raised above Room 1 at the west end of this
annexed group, and likewise built against the outer south wall of
Pueblo del Arroyo, is a small ceremonial chamber. We designated
it "Kiva B" because it was the first of its kind we happened upon at
this site and "A" was being reserved for a Great Kiva we anticipated

within the pueblo but never actually sought. Kiva B is circular and it
had been enclosed by straight masonry walls to effect the subterranean
positions required of Chaco Canyon kivas, but otherwise it is as
un-Chaco-like as the house group with which it is associated. Like
that in the houses, its masonry is a haphazard composition of both
laminate and friable sandstone, worked and unworked (pl. 45, lower).
Remnants of its enclosing square survive on either side, but the south
wall presumably was undercut and lost with enlargement of Jackson's
"old arroyo" (pl. 44, B; see also Introduction, p. 2).

Kiva B is 11½ feet in diameter at the floor. Encircling the floor is
an earthen bench that averages 12 inches wide and 34 inches high.
Above bench level the kiva is masonry lined, but the bench itself is
entirely of earth except at the south recess. Clearly the bench was
left when the kiva pit was dug down into the canyon alluvium. Sooted

plaster adheres both to the stonework of the upper wall and to the bare
earth of the bench.

There are no pilasters in Kiva B. Its flat roof was supported by
beams extending across from wall to wall at a height of 7 feet 9 inches.
An empty beam socket may be seen below and to the right of the
seated figure in plate 45, lower. At approximately waist level of this
same figure paired ceiling beams from Room 8 end flush with the
wall's exterior, a few inches below the ledge that identifies floor level
in second-story Room 8B-I. That ledge lies 10½ feet above the kiva
floor and, as previously noted, 7 feet 3 inches above the floor in
Room 1, adjoining.

The masonry-lined south bench recess in Kiva B is 47 inches wide
and 6 inches deep. In the middle of it, on the floor and abutting its
rear wall, is a rude masonry platform 7 inches high, 29 inches long,
29 inches wide at the back and 24 inches in front. From the top of
this platform a ventilator, 10 inches wide by 21 inches high, opens
into an air duct or tunnel that extends southward 44 inches to meet a
masonry-lined shaft. This latter is 14 inches square and presumably
once rose to kiva roof level. The tunnel had been covered with small
poles, split cedar, and a layer of sandstone slabs. That this roofing
had collapsed at some time and been replaced is suggested by the misalined
stones above (pl. 49, B). The ventilator opening apparently
was narrowed at the same time for, as rebuilt, it was not carefully
centered in the recess wall. Through shaft and tunnel fresh air was
drawn into the kiva as air heated by the midfloor fireplace escaped
through the ceiling hatchway.

The fireplace is a stone-lined box, 16 by 20 inches, sunk 5 inches
into the floor. Because a deflector is lacking I presume the 7-inchhigh
platform, 18 inches distant, in some way shielded the flame from
ventilator drafts. The expected sipapu, between fireplace and north
bench, was not discovered.

Built upon the Kiva B roof and against the outside of Room 8 are
two wall fragments and a buttress (pl. 45, lower; fig. 41). The latter
is square ended directly above the inside curve of the kiva, but the two
fragments clearly represent one-time, roof-level enclosures: a small
room at the northeast corner of the square and an alcove opposite.
Close in the far corner of this alcove is a fireplace, 11 by 19 inches
by 6 inches deep. Beneath the alcove floor and extending southward
between the convex kiva curve and its enclosing wall is a long, narrow
space that had been paved 4½ feet below the level of the kiva
ceiling and thereafter filled with household sweepings. From this

rubbish we tabulated 1,902 potsherds of which 99 were of types I
described as "Old Bonitian" when discussing the material culture of
Pueblo Bonito (Judd, 1954, p. 21) and 798 were "Late Bonitian."
Of these latter 40 were decorated in straight-line oblique hachure, 196
were of a variety we called "Chaco-San Juan," and 562 were fragments
of Corrugated-coil culinary ware.

The narrow space opposite, between the kiva and its east enclosing
wall likewise had been intentionally filled with blown sand and debris
of occupation. Here we recovered a single square-stemmed, sidenotched
arrowhead, a knife made from a flint flake, two bone awls,
and a small needle (U.S.N.M. No. 334921). Also, a bone flaker for
chipping arrowheads and knives, an oval, flat-bottomed but undrilled
lignite button measuring 1[fraction 5 by 16] by 1 by [fraction 7 by 16] inches, a handful of unworked
lignite fragments, and a number of miscellaneous potsherds.

Kiva B itself was filled mostly with masonry fallen from the second
and third stories of Room 8. Among this wreckage we found the
customary assortment of potsherds, a bone awl, a couple of hammerstones,
and a chert flake chipped on both edges for use as a knife.
In addition there was a ⅝-inch-thick section of a globular concretion
that may have been shaped as a jar cover but that had last served as a
palette in the preparation of yellow paint (U.S.N.M. No. 334839)
and a stone artifact whose like I have never seen in another collection
from the Southwest. It is a discoidal made from a waterworn cobble
of very hard reddish conglomeratic quartzite and its periphery reduced
by pecking to a uniform ½-inch width—as beautifully symmetrical
as any Chunkee stone ever found in Georgia. Ours measures
2⅞ inches in diameter by 1⅝ inches thick (pl. 40, v), and I am told,
with considerable hesitation, that cobbles of similar composition might
be found in the San Juan Mountains. Traces of fugitive red paint
are to be seen on both faces.

Masonry toppled from the second and third stories of Rooms 9
and 10, plus the ever-present windblown sand of Chaco Canyon, likewise
filled the seven deserted homes associated with Kiva B. None of
these dwellings contained a recognizable trash pile but each sheltered
a few artifacts, or fragments of artifacts, abandoned or overlooked
on moving day. Room 6 held the fewest, two manos and four hammerstones;
Room 3 the most. Here we found the following:

• 1 tubular bone bead, ½ inch long

• 2 bone awls

• 1 discoidal potsherd, 1⅝ inches diameter, edges beveled, 3 biconical drillings

• 1 metate, 12 x 17 x 3 inches

• 2 manos and 2 fragments

---

105





• 1 manolike stone shaped on 3 edges but not used as a mano

• 1 hammerstone

• 1 small smoothing stone

• 2 corrugated pots (pl. 47, c, d)

• 1 coyote skull (field No. 88)

• 1 right half of a human upper jaw (field No. 89)

The last item, half an upper jaw found among fallen masonry about
18 inches above the floor, is of peculiar interest since the left half
of the same jaw (field No. 92) was recovered a week later in Room 9.
There is no means of direct communication between the two rooms,
and I have no idea as to how the fragments became separated. They
presumably belong to a disarticulated adult male skeleton (U.S.N.M.
No. 327141), the major portion of which lay at the west end of 9.

The two culinary vessels from Room 3 (pl. 47, c, d) are thoroughly
typical of the early phase of Pueblo III as it developed throughout the
San Juan drainage. Each has the characteristic egg-shaped body,
constricted neck, and outflaring rim, but the coils on d are narrower
(5½ to the inch) and less boldly indented than those on c. Neither
form nor workmanship fixes precisely the district in which these two
were made, but there can be no doubt as regards the canteen illustrated
on plate 28, c, restored from fragments recovered in Rooms 2
and 3. Its gray surface was smoothed and decorated with organic
paint prior to polishing. The paint itself is mostly a smoky gray in
color, without relief, and burnished in places by the polishing stone.
Shape and a slightly concave base mark the vessel as of Pueblo III
age; its decorative elements are familiar ones in southwestern Colorado
and southeastern Utah where organic paint was favored in
Pueblo III times.

I am less confident of my judgment as regards two bowls found
crushed in Room 5 (pl. 47, a, b). The first, unslipped and inexpertly
made, has a rim that is rounded in part, [fraction 3 by 16] to ¼ inch thick, partially
incurved, and irregularly ticked with carbon paint. Externally the
vessel has been hand smoothed without entirely obliterating the
structural coils. The second bowl is thinner, with a flattened, unornamented
rim, a flattened bottom, and a decorative band of opposed rectangular
scrolls, plus some solid fill-in, drawn in a blue-gray pigment
that lacks the relief of a mineral paint but, nevertheless, exhibits the
tendency of a low-grade mineral paint to rub off. Perhaps we have
here one of those infrequent examples in which the two pigments
were mixed. An occasional line extended past its rightful ending
might reflect the carelessness of early Chaco (Transitional) potters,
or simply lack of experience.

There is but little else in the way of cultural material from these
seven outside rooms that merits description. Stone implements such
as hammers, manos, and metates, and slab fragments were left in the
rooms where they were found; bird and mammal bones and awl fragments
were noted and discarded. A bone awl from Room 1
(U.S.N.M. No. 334922) is noteworthy because of its 9-inch length
and the drilled hole at the butt. Like that shown on plate 37, f, it
might have served as a dagger, although we lack evidence of such a
weapon among the historic and prehistoric Pueblos.

In addition to fragments of the canteen (pl. 28, c), we found in
Room 2 a thin red claystone pendant ⅞ inch in diameter (U.S.N.M.
No. 334749), a couple of squared sandstone slabs each ⅜ inch thick
but one measuring 10½ by 12 inches and the other 14 by 15, and a
cherty sandstone concretion 6¼ inches in diameter by 5½ inches thick,
unmodified except for an encircling groove at the waist. It is doubtless
only fortuitous that this grooved concretion lay on the floor beside
the unfinished ax shown in plate 41, c.

The binned metate in Room 5 (pl. 48, right) is foreign to Chaco
Canyon. Its outstanding feature is a transversely flat, full-length,
over-all grinding surface. On this type of mill a hand stone as wide
as or wider than the grinding surface ordinarily would be employed,
but in this particular instance the accompanying mano was only 7
inches long. Metates of this type, mounted in a bin, came into use as
early as Pueblo II (Brew, 1946, p. 240). Thereafter they were
favored in certain areas but not in all; they are the preferred type in
Hopi homes today (Bartlett, 1933, p. 17). The type has been variously
described but most frequently as "flat," although the grinding
surface is invariably more or less concave longitudinally.

The one-end-open troughed metate was the prevailing type in Chaco
Canyon. Here, while the B.M. III and P. I cultures survived, metates
made from relatively thin slabs of sandstone predominated (Roberts,
1929, p. 132; Judd, 1924, p. 402, pl. 1, lower); those made from
thicker slabs became the fashion later. Both varieties were found at
Pueblo Bonito and the thinner I attribute to the P. II portion of the
population (Judd, 1954, pp. 133-137).

Metate bins are known from only two rooms at Pueblo Bonito, 90
and 291, and in both instances they had been dismantled. Although
Morris, excavating the "Annex" at Aztec Ruin (1924, pp. 235-236),
expresses doubt that troughed metates were ever binned, circumstantial
evidence from Pueblo Bonito points otherwise. In all our

digging there we found no trace of a metate, thick or thin, that was
not troughed, and Pepper reports none.[1]

Within the main walls of Pueblo del Arroyo we likewise observed
only two rooms equipped for milling, 41 and 55, and the bins in each
also had been stripped of their respective metates. Here, again, as at
Pueblo Bonito, we may not be positive that the missing mills were
troughed, but of all those reported in our field notes and catalog cards
only one is described as of the "flat" type with over-all grinding surface,
the binned example in Room 5. Since this is the exception, it
adds support to my conviction that Room 5 and its neighbors were
built by outsiders. A second, dubious specimen, recorded from Room
23 and described in my notes as 16 inches long by 1 inch thick, 10½
inches wide at one end and 6 inches at the other, may be one our Zuñi
installed in the Room 55 bin.

At Łeyit Kin, a small Chaco Canyon village apparently occupied
at the same time as the great pueblos, Bertha Dutton (1938, pp. 6768)
recovered 50 metates of which 5 were of the flat variety. From
a second small-house site about a mile to the west, Hibben (1937,
p. 90) reported 84 metates and metate fragments "all of a single type,
the open end trough." In the same ruin a year later Woodbury
(1939, p. 58) found 22 additional specimens, 5 with trough open at
both ends and 1 "of the plain surface (slab) type" without trough.
None was in a bin. Thus, by whatever adjective it is described, the
transversely flat, longitudinally concave metate with over-all grinding
surface is not a cultural trait of Pueblo del Arroyo, Pueblo Bonito,
and other major Chaco Canyon pueblos, although it may occur infrequently
in nearby contemporary small-house settlements.

As stated above, I believe Rooms 1-7 were built and occupied by
immigrants to Chaco Canyon. Everything about them looks alien:
careless masonry, small size and low ceilings, potsherd chinking in
walls, the above-floor ventilator in Kiva B. The binned metate in
Room 5 is not a local type, therefore its owner must have carried it
on her back, along with other possessions, from a former home. There
is nothing equally distinctive about the other artifacts recovered from
these rooms although some of the potsherds might also be regarded as
foreign. Potsherds were present in each room but not in rubbish-pile
quantities. As a matter of fact, only 1,559 nonduplicating sherds
were tabulated from the seven dwellings. Dr. Roberts will have more

to say about these fragments in his forthcoming monograph on the
ceramic remains of Chaco Canyon, and I only anticipate his analysis
by stating that, of the total, 67.6 percent belong in the four categories
I employed at Pueblo Bonito to approximate the proportion of pottery
manufactured by the Late Bonitians. One hundred sixty-three, or
10.4 percent, of the sherds were of the variety we called "Chaco-San
Juan."

Human skeletal remains were uncovered in the two adjoining rooms,
3 and 4. Upon approximately a foot and a half of constructional
debris or fallen masonry in the middle of Room 3 we found the right
half of an adult upper jaw (field No. 89). The remainder of that
same jaw (No. 92) was subsequently unearthed under like conditions
in Room 9, and there is no direct connection between 9 and 3. In
each case the fragment lay amidst broken stonework between 1 and 2
feet above the floor. There were no other human bones in Room 3,
but in addition to the fragment mentioned we removed from the west
end of Room 9 most of a disarticulated male skeleton (No. 91).

In the northeast corner of Room 4 windblown sand had collected
to a depth of 4 inches before the body of an infant (field No. 90),
wrapped in some sort of textile, was brought in and buried there, head
to the west. More sand was carried in to cover the little bundle and
to trail away in diminishing depth toward the west wall. The customary
debris of reconstruction had been dumped in upon the blown
sand, and among that debris, in the west half of the room, we found
the mandibles of a second infant and two adults. Fallen masonry had
thereafter collected wall high. Clearly Rooms 1-7 had been vacated
while families still dwelt in the village proper, on the opposite side
of the leaning wall against which 1-7 were built.

THE TRIPLE-WALLED TOWER AND ENVIRONS

When I first saw Pueblo del Arroyo, in June 1920, a broad pile of
earth and rubble was banked up against the middle west side (pl. 43).
It reached to the second-story ceiling level, yet no stonework showed
through. Building stones strewed the surface, but these plainly had
fallen from the upper, westernmost wall of the pueblo. Topping all
were several heaps of more recently turned earth and rock, thrown
out by unknown persons seeking archeological souvenirs. From the
base of the mound a less conspicuous accumulation sloped away to
merge with the valley floor.

At the west margin of this lesser accumulation, wall fragments
exposed by caving of the arroyo bank appeared, as I mentally projected

them, not only to underlie the larger mound but even Pueblo
del Arroyo itself (pl. 44, A). It was the presence of these fragmentary
walls, together with the possibility to which they seemed to point
so clearly, that persuaded me to include Pueblo del Arroyo in my initial
recommendations for a program of archeological investigation in
Chaco Canyon (Judd, 1954, p. vii).[2]

Our studies at Pueblo Bonito were inaugurated in 1921; those at
Pueblo del Arroyo, 2 years later. I had placed my chief assistant, Karl
Ruppert, in complete charge. But it was midsummer of 1926, after
he had completed scheduled excavations within the ruin, that Ruppert
led his crew to the low mound on the west side. His first exploratory
trenches cut through quantities of constructural debris—sandstone
spalls and rock-impressed chunks of adobe mud—nothing more. Not
until he dug down to the wall remnants in the arroyo bank did Ruppert
find something tangible from which to proceed. There, abutting
the masonry, was a packed clay surface easily followed. Tracing that
floor north and east brought to light a third wall, the innermost wall
of two concentric tiers of rooms encircling a central area (fig. 40).
Here, incredibly, was a triple-walled McElmo Tower in Chaco
Canyon!

Jackson (1878) and Holmes (1878), exploring southwestern Colorado
and adjoining territory in 1874 and 1875, first described the
McElmo country and its spectacular towers—circular and quadrangular,
oval and D-shaped. Both men regarded the smaller and more
numerous single-walled structures as possible lookouts; both recognized
the D-shaped and circular towers with radiating rooms as more
likely of religious than domiciliary function. Holmes, especially, was
intrigued by those with multiple walls. He reports four double-walled
towers on or near the Rio Mancos and one triple-walled tower at the
headwaters of McElmo Creek.

This latter was considered unique. Its like had not been reported
elsewhere. Fewkes (1916, p. 218, footnote 6), with understandable
skepticism, even recorded his doubt as to the reality of such a building.
To find a triple-walled tower in Chaco Canyon, therefore, was a
surprise for which we were entirely unprepared.

When Ruppert realized the significance of his discovery he proceeded
with customary skill and caution. The pavement he was following

was overlain by 3 feet of constructional debris—a conglomerate
of adobe mortar, sandstone spalls, and sand wetted by storm
waters and packed by time into an almost impenetrable mass. Pickaxes
loosened every inch. As a further handicap, the tower had been
almost completely razed; what remained was broken and disordered.
Two tiers of rooms circled a central area but neither tier was complete.
The innermost wall, more nearly razed than the other two,
was traceable for the most part only on its convex side. The highest
bit of masonry still standing, on the east, rose only 35 inches above
its floor. Sporadic fragments averaged 30 inches thick and rested
upon 21-inch-high foundations (pl. 51, upper).

Such masonry as survived consisted of salvaged building stones.
Among these, blocks of dressed friable sandstone predominated. In
some sections the blocks were laid in courses and chinked with bits
of laminate sandstone; elsewhere, courses of friable sandstone alternated
with equally thick bands composed of laminate sandstone tablets
an inch or more through. We doubt that there was a deliberate attempt
to imitate the masonry of Pueblo del Arroyo, but the use of
salvaged building blocks unquestionably resulted in stonework resembling
that in which the blocks were first employed.

The central room, 33 feet in diameter, was originally paved with
sandstone slabs but most of these had been removed, leaving only an
incomplete band at the outer edge and a broader segment in the northwest
quarter. We detected no trace of a fireplace, deflector, or other
feature. In contrast, the two encircling tiers had been floored with
adobe. Floor level appeared quite uniform throughout and just 6
inches above the base of the Pueblo del Arroyo west-wall masonry,
63 feet from the center of the Tower.

Rooms in the outer tier, perhaps 10 in number, were of unequal
length but averaged 6 feet wide; those in the inner tier averaged
6½ feet in width. The only indication of a lateral passageway anywhere
in the structure is the west jamb of an apparent door, sill
26 inches above the floor, in the outer south wall. That door, if ever
used, must have been short lived, since from the opposite side it was
blocked by the roof-level fill in the walled area enclosing Kivas "a"
and "b."

We measured the over-all outside diameter of the Tower as 73 feet
3 inches. We doubt that it was ever completed; that its rooms were
ever roofed. We believe the three concentric walls once stood considerably
higher but were razed midway of their intended height. We
observed no trace of wood, charred or otherwise, but demolition is

established by the quantities of broken wall adobe and sandstone spalls
revealed by the excavation.

Holmes (1878, pp. 398-399) describes his triple-walled McElmo
Tower as at the far side of a compact village situated on the edge of
a mesa overlooking a shallow valley. Its diameters approximated those
of "the great tower of the Rio Mancos," 25 feet inside and 43 feet
over-all; maximum height of standing walls is given as 12 feet. There
were 14 apartments about 5 feet wide in the outer tier; fallen masonry
filled the inner circle and concealed its partitions, if any. The third
and innermost wall was neither as thick nor as high as the other two
and, for this reason, Holmes assumed it to be that of a kiva. Walls
still 12 feet high after several hundred years evidence at least a
second story.

The stone towers of McElmo Creek and its tributaries, of the Rio
Mancos and the upper San Juan, have awakened the interest and
curiosity of at least three generations of archeologists, and the purpose
for which they were built is still obscure. Jackson and Holmes
supposed the single-walled structures to have been connected with the
defense of nearby communities; those of more complex construction
to have been associated with ceremonial practices. Schulman (1950)
summarizes a considerable body of fieldwork since Holmes and Jackson,
but finds nothing to corroborate or deny their early surmise. He
passes over the double- and triple-walled towers which are our sole
interest at the moment.

Holmes's great tower on the upper McElmo has never been excavated
so far as I know. He gives its over-all diameter as 43 feet. The
triple-walled structure back of Pueblo del Arroyo, partially built and
then demolished, measured 73 feet 3 inches. Holmes, with time for
examination limited, gives few constructional details, and our information
is equally meager. Data are not yet available for a third triplewalled
tower, recently discovered near Aztec, N. Mex., midway between
McElmo Creek and Chaco Canyon. Architecture identifies all
three as of Pueblo III age, and a note in American Antiquity (vol. 20,
No. 1, p. 96) reports that Gordon R. Vivian, repairing the one at
Aztec for the National Park Service in the fall of 1953, found earlier
Pueblo III remains underneath.

Architecture and pottery together identify the canyon-head ruins
of the McElmo-Yellowjacket-Hovenweep area (Morley, 1908; Morley
and Kidder, 1917; Fewkes, 1916, 1918, 1925; Kidder, 1924, p. 65)
more specifically with the distinctive Mesa Verde culture, a phase of
Pueblo III civilization that culminated in the justly famous cliff

dwellings of what is now the Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.
Recorded tree-ring dates from those cliff dwellings lie between A. D.
958 and 1273 (Smiley, 1951, p. 23). We found no scrap of wood in
our triple-walled Chaco Canyon Tower, but 35 constructional timbers
from nearby Pueblo del Arroyo were felled in the 66-year bracket
A. D. 1052-1117 (ibid., p. 19). Since floor level in our Tower is only
6 inches above that in the pueblo we may assume that the latter antedated
the Tower by a relatively brief interval.

There can be no doubt but that the double- and triple-walled towers,
with their concentric circles and radiating rooms, are related to the
Great Kiva of late Pueblo III times as Morris (1921, p. 138) pointed
out long ago. But no one has yet fathomed the nature and extent of
that relationship. We must await future studies in Holmes's triplewalled
tower on the upper McElmo and in the newly discovered example
at Aztec. Ours at Pueblo del Arroyo provided few helpful
data and no artifacts.

Between the Tower and the west side of del Arroyo are two kivas,
almost wholly razed, each within a partially demolished rectangle.
We cleared the area to what I regarded as a safe, protective level and,
in the process, exposed a number of other walls, or sections of walls,
the significance of which was not always apparent. Doubtless we
missed still others, but all those actually uncovered, like the great
Tower, had been built with reclaimed rock, chiefly dressed blocks of
friable sandstone, and all had been razed to the last few courses.
South of the Tower are two more kivas, and I shall present the four
in the order in which they were excavated.

Kiva "a" (fig. 42) averages 12 feet 5 inches in diameter at the floor;
its bench averages 6½ inches wide and 22 inches high. Both the bench
and the wall above were constructed of fairly large sandstone blocks,
shaped and unshaped, irregularly and unevenly coursed, heavily plastered
and sooted. There were no pilasters; no south recess. At the
time of excavation the main wall rose 3½ feet above the bench at the
northeast but only 2 feet at the west.

The ventilator outlet, in the south bench with sill at floor level, is
10 inches wide by 12 inches high; lintel poles support the masonry
above. The tunnel extends S. 2° E. 23 inches to connect with a 10-inchsquare
shaft that rises 22 inches above the level of the kiva floor and
opens upon a pavement outside the enclosing wall.

An irregular, clay-lined fireplace 25 inches in diameter and 7 inches
deep lies 4½ feet north of the ventilator; it contained four sandstone
firedogs and was filled with wood ash. The fireplace had been built

above the southwest corner of a masonry-lined pit, 53 inches east-west
by 31 inches by 17½ inches deep, previously filled with constructional
waste and floored over. Although the fill included neither ash nor
charcoal, the pit walls and floor were more or less reddened from fires.
There was no deflector between ventilator and fireplace.

Fig. 42.—Kivas "a" and "b."

The Kiva "a" floor is 2½ inches above that in the Tower, but the
west side of the enclosing square abuts the Tower masonry 35 inches
above its base. At the time of excavation Kiva "a" was filled with
blown sand and rubble from its razed walls. In this we found nothing
but a handful of late-type potsherds and the broken earthenware pipe
illustrated by figure 44. Its bowl is ⅝ inch deep. The three longitudinal
punctate zigzags by way of ornamentation are reminiscent of an earlier
culture, but here it is, associated with late Chaco sherds in the fill of a

non-Chaco kiva abutting the remains of a McElmo triple-walled
Tower.

Kiva "b" lies immediately east of "a" and within the same enclosure.
It averages 11 feet 7 inches in diameter at the floor; its upper wall
had been razed to bench level. The bench, averaging 6 inches wide
and 24 inches high, is of masonry that includes shaped and unshaped
blocks of both friable and laminate sandstone, heavily plastered and
smoke stained. As in "a," there are no pilasters and no south recess.
The floor is 13 inches above that in Kiva "a" and 16 inches above that
in the Tower.

A ventilator at floor level was recessed 1 inch to receive a neatly
fitted sandstone slab measuring 13½ by 15½ inches by ¾ inch thick
(found on floor fronting outlet). It opens into a 12-by-13-inch tunnel
that is roofed with small poles and extends S. 10° W. 24 inches to
connect with an 11-by-12-inch masonry shaft the outside of which
stands 5 inches beyond the enclosing wall. A Pueblo II metate 1½
inches thick, mano groove to the south, stands embedded in the kiva
floor 29½ inches from the ventilators and forms a fireplace screen
20 inches wide by 17½ inches high (pl. 51, lower). Slab fragments
wedged in at either side provided basal support. A rectangular, claylined
fireplace lies 22½ inches north of the deflector and, like that in
"a," it contained four sandstone firedogs and was filled with wood ash.

In the corner between Kiva "b" and the Tower is an odd-shaped,
doorless cell with its adobe floor 3 inches above that in the kiva and
19 inches above that in the adjacent Tower. The east wall of this
corner room abutted the Tower masonry and was left standing free
when the latter was razed. The fact that only the convex north wall
is plastered suggests that our triple-walled Tower had been coated
externally with mud at the time of construction.

Kiva "c" (fig. 43) lies between "b" and Pueblo del Arroyo and is
surrounded by straight walls that form a generous enclosure. As in
Kiva "b," the upper wall had been razed to bench level, but in this
case the bench masonry had also been stripped away, leaving only its
rough stone-and-adobe core. Nevertheless, we learned that the bench
had been 19 inches wide and 26 inches high. Mud plaster 1¾ inches
thick and representing successive resurfacings still adhered to a section
of bench at the north side of the chamber. Kiva "c" averaged
17 feet 3 inches in diameter, and its floor, in contrast to those in "a"
and "b," is 2½ inches lower than that of the Tower.

A Chaco-type south recess, 8 feet 3 inches wide at the rear, interrupted
the Kiva "c" bench for its full height and depth. Passing under
the middle of this recess is a subfloor ventilator tunnel or duct 19

inches wide, masonry lined and roofed with small poles. It continues
S. 19° W. 4 feet, there to connect with the air intake, a 16-by17-inch
masonry shaft. Since we did not clear the middle of the kiva,

Fig. 43.—Kiva "c."

the total length of this duct and its depth were not ascertained. Neither
did we uncover the customary fireplace and the deflector, if any.

On the west side of the kiva is a subfloor vault, 8 feet 1 inch long,
25 inches wide, and 14 inches deep (pl. 50, A). Its north, west, and

south sides are lined with clay but the east side is a masonry composite—laminate
sandstone of fairly uniform thickness in the lower
courses but larger blocks of friable sandstone, both shaped and unshaped,
above. Paralleling the west side at a distance of 7 inches and
extending 16 inches beyond each end is the impression of a slender
pole and, directly beneath it, the clay-filled imprint of its predecessor.
At each end of the vault is a sort of border, 15 inches north-south,
bearing the imprints of unpeeled willows, split cedar, and cedar bark.
These imprints curve upward slightly at the west as though the materials
that caused them had once rested upon the lower pole. There is
no corresponding pole impression on the east side, and although the
"border" at the south end extends 4 inches to either side of the vault,
that at the north extends to the west only.

In no other Chaco kiva did we find equally conspicuous imprints
about one of the puzzling subfloor vaults. As we interpreted the evidence
here, this particular example had been roofed at floor level with
the materials customarily employed in house ceilings—excepting only
the supporting poles which may not have been considered necessary
in bridging a 2-foot space. But imprints of the supposed covering
occur at the vault ends only, not along the sides. The original pole
on the west edge had been removed and its impression packed with
mud to cushion a substitute. The new pole rested directly above the
imprint of the old one. Then a new floor was laid, at least from
bench to vault, rising 2 inches to top the substitute pole and the northend
"border." A well-turned hematite cylinder (U.S.N.M. No.
334781), ½ inch in diameter by 1[fraction 3 by 16] inches long, lay at the north end
of the upper pole imprint.

Unlike the majority of kiva vaults cleared in the course of our
Chaco Canyon investigations, that in "c" had not been filled and
floored over while the kiva continued in use. In this particular
instance the vault apparently served its unknown purpose until demolition
was ordered, at which time its covering was removed and wreckage
from the razed walls was allowed to fill kiva and vault indiscriminately.
In the vault fill we found several large sherds of an olla
decorated in Late Hachure and the burned abrading stone shown in
plate 40, s.

Kiva "d" lies north of "c" and within walls that abut both the
McElmo Tower and the west side of Pueblo del Arroyo. It had been
more nearly demolished than the three already described. Its main
wall and the bench, if any, had been completely razed on the east
and south, to within 10 inches of its floor on the west, and to within

18 inches on the north. We detected no trace of a south recess. A
floor diameter of 15 feet 3 inches is indicated.

The priestly builders of Kiva "d" apparently had difficulty in deciding
just what they wanted. The floor is of packed sand with a
minimum of binding clay, rounding off with the wall plaster and
blackened through use. We counted only two layers of this plaster,
an initial ¼-inch spread directly upon the stonework and a second thin
finishing wash of whitened clay. On the sandy floor, which is 5 feet
7 inches above that in the central room of the Tower, we found no
fireplace although a small quantity of wood ash was scattered over
the middle of it.

Constructional indecision
seems indicated because the
kiva masonry continues 4
feet 5 inches below floor
level with apparent work
surfaces at depths of 5
inches and 4 feet 2 inches,
respectively. The lower of
these two surfaces is in-

distinct and uneven; the upper, less irregular and firmly packed. Each
is overlain by a purposeful fill of clean sand. From top to bottom the
masonry consists of dressed blocks of friable sandstone often somewhat
angular in shape. Absence of laminate sandstone is particularly
noticable. Wall plaster does not extend to either of these work
surfaces.

Kiva "d" is enclosed on the north and south by straight walls that
abut both the Tower and the pueblo. The north enclosing wall, standing
upon a 6-inch foundation of large, irregular blocks of friable
sandstone, abuts the Tower masonry 25 inches above its foundation
and the west wall of Pueblo del Arroyo 22 inches above its base. Here,
143 feet 8 inches from the northwest corner of the pueblo, the abutting
wall had been completely razed, leaving only its foundation.
Broken masonry above the union suggests that the former enclosing
wall had been tied into that of the pueblo. At the other end of this
east-west wall, 25 inches above the Tower foundation, a pavement
extends floorlike to the north and east.

The opposite enclosing wall, 17 feet distant and razed to within
14 inches of its foot-high foundation, abuts the pueblo masonry
31 inches above its foundation. Seven feet beyond is the 16-inchthick
north wall of the Kiva "c" enclosure and, 3 feet farther, a

shorter parallel wall, 22 inches thick. The latter stands 2 feet higher
than the first, but both were erected with reclaimed building stones
and both abut the plastered exterior of the pueblo.

By themselves these two examples of rather rude construction
would excite little interest, but what we cannot comprehend is a mass
of solid rubble—chunks of sandstone in adobe mud—3½ feet from the
pueblo, standing on the same level as the two rude walls and overlying
both of them. This feature, in its present condition, defies explanation.
Between and above the two walls and, again, north of the first, stones
have been pried from the pueblo wall as though to tie in other stonework
at a higher level (pl. 52, A). North and south from this puzzling
assemblage lay a thick blanket of constructional debris or, more likely,
waste from the razing of these four small kivas and their enclosing
walls (pl. 52, B).

The reader will have noticed that not only the triple-walled Tower
but the four kivas and their individual enclosures were all built of
reclaimed building stones and that all were subsequently demolished.
Although some allowance must be made for distance, the Tower appears
to have been erected first, for its central pavement is only 6
inches above the Pueblo del Arroyo west-wall foundation while the
kiva floors, with one exception, are higher and, their enclosing walls
higher still. Kiva "c," the only one of the four with Chaco features,
was floored 2½ inches lower than the Tower. The one identifiable
floor in Kiva "d" lies 5 feet 7 inches above the Tower floor but its
associated masonry extends down to within 14 inches of that floor.
There is no doubt in my mind that the four kivas and their enclosures
were built after the Tower, but I cannot say all were razed at the
same time, however plausible this may seem.

In exploring what remained of the Tower and its environs we found
comparatively little in the way of cultural material. The RobertsAmsden
tabulation shows a preponderance of Chaco-San Juan sherds
from the Tower trenches and a high proportion of Mesa Verde blackon-white.
A number of miscellaneous artifacts were unearthed as we
removed the accumulation between the Tower and the pueblo. Most
of them came from a 40-foot space between the rubble pile northeast
of Kiva "c" and a point opposite Room 49; all, apparently, had been
discarded with floor sweepings. The following list will show the
number and character of this material: 18 bone awls, including only 1
of bird bone; 10 tubular bone "beads," ⅞-2¼ inches long; the blade
fragment of a spatulate bone knife (U.S.N.M. No. 334930) and a
dozen pieces of worked mammal bones; 5 chipped arrowheads, 3 of

them with square base and side notches; a former ¾-grooved ax, regrooved,
broken, and used as a maul (pl. 41, g); a friable sandstone
building block, smoothed on the face and incised with crossed lines
(No. 334872); a sandstone disk 2 inches in diameter by [fraction 3 by 16] inch
thick and 3 disks ⅞-1⅞ inches in diameter, made from potsherds; the
neatly squared fragment of a fine-grained sandstone tablet ¼ inch
thick with a half-inch circle gouged out at the corner (No. 334809);
8 fragments of human-effigy vessels, all but one decorated with mineral
paint (pl. 36, A); 2 fragments of a double-bowl rectangular
redware vessel, polished black in one half, red in the other (No.
334677); part of the handle from a Chaco-San Juan style ladle
(fig. 23), and the miniature half-gourd ladle with broken handle
shown on plate 27, j; and portions of several human skeletons (field
No. 596). The articulated skeleton of an adult male or female (field
No. 191; U.S.N.M. No. 327137) appeared to have been interred,
without grave furniture, among the accumulated debris south of the
Kiva "c" square.

Nearby but not immediately associated with this burial was a small
fragment of an apocynum-fiber sandal (No. 334712) and part of a
comblike bone object, concavo-convex in cross section and 2⅞ inches
long, with 5 "teeth" polished by friction on the underside (pl. 37, e).
Farther south, outside Room 16 and 21 inches above its floor level,
was a pile of burned timbers and burned debris of reconstruction, the
clean-up after a fire somewhere in the village. Room 24 is not regarded
as a likely source of the pile despite the fact that its east wall, with
the ends of several charred ceiling poles still present, had been burned
above a 33-inch-deep accumulation of collapsed masonry and blown
sand. From this same general area, between Kiva "c" and the southwest
corner of the pueblo, we collected 3,988 potsherds of which
Roberts and Amsden tabulated 138 as Corrugated-coil culinary ware,
94 as Chaco-San Juan, and 12 as of Late Hachure. Only 31 were
types that, at Pueblo Bonito, I would have listed as products of the
Old Bonitians.

OUTLYING WALLS

Under this heading I desire briefly to consider two walls, one adjoining
Pueblo del Arroyo and the other nearby. The first, presently
standing 4 feet high against the outer southwest corner of Room 8,
extended west an unknown distance before Jackson's "old arroyo"
destroyed all but the easternmost 15 feet of it (pl. 45, upper). Abutting
the south face of this remnant, but on a silty layer several inches

higher, is the west side of the Kiva B enclosure, likewise largely
washed away by the "old arroyo" (pl. 44, B).

Following his 1877 examination of this ruin, W. H. Jackson (1878,
p. 443) wrote: "The arroyo is undermining the soil close to the southwest
corner of the pueblo, and has already exposed some old lines of
masonry, which on the surface do not give any indications whatever
of their existence." These are the "old walls" of his plan (herein,
fig. 45), low walls buried under successive layers of valley alluvium
during or following occupation of the village. Nothing is now visible
of those walls except, possibly, a southward-extending section near
the angle at the west end.

In 1897 or 1898 the Hyde Exploring Expedition built a boardinghouse
for its employees a few yards from the southeastern corner of
the pueblo and, nearby, prepared a dugway for its freight wagons
across both the old and new watercourses. In his 1901 report to the
Commissioner of the General Land Office, Holsinger (MS., p. 52;
herein, fig. 45) "amends" Jackson's plan and approximates the locations
of both the crossing and the boardinghouse but records nothing
relative to Jackson's "old walls." Nevertheless, if these latter had
been completely destroyed in the interval, memory of them persisted
in 1911 when, following his visit to Chaco Canyon in the spring of that
year, Huntington (1914, p. 82) wrote: "Three feet under the level of
the main plain upon which stand the ruins of Pueblo del Arroyo
traces of old walls can be seen extending 100 feet beyond the present
ruins; the lowest part of these walls is 5 feet below the present surface."
Elsewhere (Bryan, 1954, p. 33; Judd, 1954, p. 13) we have
noted that 3 to 5 feet of Chaco Canyon alluvium not only buried walls
and fields but threatened inundation of small outlying settlements.

I can conceive no logical purpose for a 2-foot-high straight and
detached wall 100 feet long where Jackson placed it except as a means
of diverting contemporary floodwaters away from the village. That
may also have been the function of a now-buried wall that extends
east from Pueblo Bonito nearly 200 feet. It does not apply, however,
to a similar but still longer wall that stretches out across sand and
rock from the northeast corner of Pueblo Alto, on the cliff north of
Bonito.

The buried twelfth-century channel which Jackson saw exposed in
the bank of the arroyo in 1877 passed to the south of his "old walls"
and his "old arroyo," but north of them, in the side of a dug storage
cellar back of the boardinghouse, Bryan (1954, p. 34) noted evidence
of a lesser channel containing sherds of late types of Chaco Canyon
pottery. The twelfth-century arroyo may not have seemed a menace

Plate 28.—Canteens (a-e) and pitchers (f-k).

Plate 29.—Seed jars.

Plate 30.—Water jars.

Plate 31.—Ollas and storage jars.

Plate 32.—Small jars and Corrugated-coil culinary vessels.

Plate 33.—Corrugated-coil culinary ware from the upper fill in Room 65 (a-f)
and from Room 27 (g-i).

Plate 34.—Twelve Corrugated-coil culinary vessels stored on the floor of Room 65.

Plate 35.—Earthenware representations of bifurcated baskets.

Fig. 45.—Jackson's 1877 plan of Pueblo del Arroyo as amended by Holsinger in 1901
(in heavier line).

to the residents of Pueblo del Arroyo, but they must have been annoyed,
if not apprehensive, when layers of flood-deposited mud annually
piled up against their village.

Three Hyde Expedition photographs, generously made available
by Dr. Harry L. Shapiro, head curator of anthropology at the American
Museum of Natural History, contribute a further note to our
present subject (pl. 53, a-c). The lower shows the Chaco, in flood,
cutting across the course of Jackson's "old arroyo." At the right in
this view a conspicuous, mid-distance bank marks the border of the
old channel. In a closer view (b) a layer of rubbish, apparently
debris of reconstruction (the print identifies "pottery in the bank near
Pueblo del Arroyo"), extends in varied depth to left and right. If I
judge correctly, part of that same layer appears in the third photograph
(a), beyond the bank and nearer the ruin. Although it approximates
the position of Jackson's "old walls" it is my guess that
that deposit represents part of the village trash pile, concealed beneath
3 or more feet of silt. At the time of our studies absence of a recognizable
village dump was puzzling and led us to suppose it had
been leveled and hauled away to provide space for the Hyde Expedition's
boardinghouse. The normal place for a local village trash pile
would have been south or southeast of the settlement. No portion of
the 100-foot-long old wall was visible during the course of our
explorations.

That some leveling and clearing up occurred hereabout may be
assumed since the Hyde Expedition would naturally have been solicitous
for the comfort of its employees and, later, of its guests after
the boardinghouse had become the "hotel." Both Holsinger and Huntington
stayed here, and the former was prompted by proximity of the
ruin to do "a little prospecting with pick and shovel" (MS., p. 51).
In the course of this activity he uncovered what he described as "a
gateway" in the middle of the court-enclosing arc of one-story rooms.
Holsinger's revision of Jackson's plan was not known to us until long
after, but while searching here for room corners in preparation of our
own ground plan we observed nothing to suggest an eastern entrance.
However we did find, outside the arc of rooms, a slab-lined
fireplace and a low angular wall without meaning to us; also, between
the boardinghouse and the ruin, evidence of what may have been an
outlying kiva, wholly or partially destroyed in the excavation for a
modern cistern. The successive silt layers that had half buried the
small Pueblo III ruin on the opposite side of the channel (pl. 53, c)
continue to the south wall of Pueblo del Arroyo and around to the
west (pl. 44, A).