University of Virginia Library

RECAPITULATION

Many of the earthenware vessels recovered by the National Geographic
Society were burial offerings; others were casualties of the
kitchen. All, irrespective of their fate, are separable into various
categories on the basis of shape, ornamentation, and technique of
manufacture. The stratigraphic studies and sherd analyses conducted
by Roberts and Amsden produced conclusive evidence that
local pottery styles changed repeatedly during occupancy of Pueblo
Bonito.

Stratigraphy revealed the cultural unity of fragments in previously
undisturbed old rubbish underlying the West Court. Only in the
upper layers were late sherds encountered and they were proportionally

few. Elsewhere, in the two great rubbish piles south of the
pueblo and in debris-filled rooms, fragments of early and late pottery
were intermixed. The fact that the one group of wares stood alone
during the period required for 8 feet of household debris to accumulate,
and thereafter invariably occurred in association with wares of
the second group, seems to me contributory proof that Pueblo Bonito
at its height was the product of two culturally unequal but contemporaneous
peoples, the Old Bonitians and the Late Bonitians.

The older ceramic assemblage comprised plain-bodied, banded- or
coiled-neck cooking pots and painted vessels whose design elements
included ticked and waved lines, interlocking whorls, squiggled hatching
chiefly in curvilinear figures, and thin parallel lines often bordering
stepped triangles. Among the earlier bowls in this group are
those slipped inside and out and often stone-polished. But time
brought a decreasing interest in surface finish; a moist hand or gourd
scraper replaced the polishing stone.

Most conspicuous among Late Bonitian pottery were new vessel
forms ornamented largely with straight-line hatching, over-all corrugated-coil
culinary ware, and a black-on-white organic paint variety
Amsden and Roberts designated the "Chaco-San Juan." Our exmination
of stratified rubbish underlying the West Court showed that
while squiggled hatching occurred in practically all layers, straightline
hatching appeared in Strata A-C only (the upper 4′ 2″) of
Test II and not at all in Test I. So, too, with the Chaco-San Juan
group: Not a single sherd was found in Test I, although 31 fragments
were recovered from the three uppermost layers of Test II.
Corrugated-coil appeared only in Stratum A, Test I; in A-D of
Test II. The lower 8 feet contained fragments of Old Bonitian
wares only.

Whether the Chaco-San Juan ware was manufactured at Pueblo
Bonito by potters migrant from the San Juan country or imported
from the north is a question our studies do not answer. Its style
of decoration and its use of organic paint were contrary to local
practice, but its treatment of bowl exteriors, even to the slip band at
rim, was in the Chaco tradition. The ware made its appearance at
Pueblo Bonito suddenly, about the same time as straight-line hatching
and before pottery of Mesa Verde kinship was introduced; it continued
to be used in Bonitian households after the village had passed
its prime and while the population gradually dwindled and dispersed.
Fragments of it, comprising 6.6 percent of all tabulated sherds from
rooms excavated, occurred most frequently in the rubbish fill of
later-type dwellings but were not entirely wanting among Old Bonitian

debris. We collected fragments of it underneath the floor of
Old Bonitian Room 307 and under several Late Bonitian rooms of
third-period construction. The presumption is, therefore, that ChacoSan
Juan ware came in with the Late Bonitians, introducers of our
second-type masonry.

Earthenware vessels hereinbefore described as "Mesa Verde" constitute
our largest intrusive group. But they originated in some of
the earlier and less spectacular ruins of southwestern Colorado and
southeastern Utah, rather than in the famous Mesa Verde cliff dwellings,
for beam dates indicate most of these latter were constructed
in the twelth and thirteenth centuries whereas sherds of what we
have called Mesa Verde ware actually were found underneath Bonitian
structures erected before 1100.

Reporting upon his 1916 examination of the two rubbish mounds
fronting Pueblo Bonito, Nelson (1920, pp. 384-385) observes that
he first encountered typical Mesa Verde sherds in the middle strata;
that fewer of them appeared in the upper layers. Our own inquiries
provide corroborative evidence as to the relative recency of Mesa
Verde pottery at Pueblo Bonito but no suggestion of any reduction
in numbers. We found only one sherd of it in our two stratigraphic
sections through old household debris under the West Court and
that was in Test II, layer B, 18 to 24 inches below the surface. The
proportion of like fragments gathered in excavated rooms (0.4 percent)
indicates that importations from the Mesa Verde district were
never numerous. A few vessels filtered in before Kivas A, T, and V
were built; the majority arrived while the village was at maximum
development.

Of the 36 rooms from which we recovered Mesa Verde sherds, six
had been Old Bonitian dwellings; the rest, Late Bonitian houses of
which five (Rooms 153, 226, 244, 249, 256) were constructed of
fourth-type masonry. Of these five, only two had clearly served as
neighborhood dumps. A majority of our Mesa Verde fragments
came from buildings of third-period stonework in the east and southwest
quarters of the village. Two restored bowls and part of a third
are shown on plate 58, upper. The bowl and mugs found in Burial
Room 32 and the two small mugs from Room 36 (Pepper, 1920, pp.
129-130, 183) prove that these Old Bonitian structures were not
sealed until trade with the Mesa Verde district had become established,
somewhere around the end of the eleventh century or the beginning
of the twelfth.

Commerce with other culture areas was less frequent, if we judge
correctly from recovered fragments of their distinctive earthenware.

A, So-called seed jars were provided with constricted orifices that could be covered by
stone disks.

Plate 66

B, Wooden stool; C, bear effigy.

Plate 67.—Cylindrical vases and fragments.

Plate 68.—Cylindrical vases from burial rooms 329 and 330.

Plate 69.—Miniature bowls, ladles, and pitchers—probably toy dishes for little Bonitian
girls.

Of more than 200,000 sherds tabulated, less than a hundred were
recognized as from the Kayenta and Houck districts, eastern Arizona.
Proto-Kayenta black-on-red and polychrome are both included. Classic
Kayenta is wanting, as would be expected, since Pueblo Bonito
was abandoned approximately a century before Betatakin, Keet Seel,
and their contemporaries were built. A few fragments of Tularosa
ware evidence an occasional traveler from southwestern New Mexico.
Although it is reasonable to assume most of these foreign pieces were
acquired through trade, others doubtless were left by visitors.

Listing the artifacts he obtained from Pueblo villages in 1879,
Stevenson (1883, pp. 307-465) repeatedly directs attention to vessels
he suspects originated in villages other than those in which his purchases
were made. Jeancon (1923, p. 34), remarking upon the diversity
of foreign pottery he unearthed at Poshu, added: "It is still the
custom of the Pueblo people to carry gifts of pottery to their friends
in other villages where they go to visit." And I distinctly recall that
several San Ildefonso acquaintances I met at the Santo Domingo Green
Corn Dance in 1920 had some of their own native pottery with them.

Now what is meant when one refers to "typical" Chaco Canyon
pottery? At Pueblo Bonito, the only ruin with which we are herein
concerned, earthenware divides itself into two principal classifications:
Old Bonitian and Late Bonitian. The first of these, on the basis of
form, technique, and ornamentation, is readily identified as Pueblo II.
Gladwin (1945, pp. 56, 95) remarks its similarity to pottery of his
Red Mesa and Wingate Phases. Miss Hawley (1936) and other
investigators have each suggested other names.

Geometric designs of straight-line hatching within somewhat heavier
frames have long been regarded the earmark of Bonitian ceramics.
It is true that pottery so ornamented reached its greatest perfection
at Pueblo Bonito, but our studies prove it was not known locally until
the village was well along in years, and that it never became preponderant.
Early and late types of straight-line hatching together
comprised only 8.9 percent of the 203,188 sherds tabulated from
rooms excavated. The two principal varieties of Old Bonitian blackon-white
ware, Transitional and Degenerate Transitional, formed
practically the same proportion (9.3 percent) of the total. Fragments
of Old Bonitian culinary pots made up 14.7 percent of the sherds
tabulated; corrugated-coil, 33.5 percent. So the older pottery complex
is just as typical of Pueblo Bonito as the later. Both early and late
vessels are, in large measure, sherd-tempered and decorated with
mineral paint.

Straight-line hatching and every design element that distinguishes

our Transitional ware are to be seen also on pottery from Pueblo
II-III ruins in southwestern Colorado and in southeastern Utah.
They provide the "Chaco-like" quality various students have noted in
pottery from that area. This resemblance, together with a not-infrequent
Chaco-like quality in both domestic and kiva architecture, have
been attributed by some investigators to influence from Chaco Canyon.
Although I have made no recent first-hand observations north of the
San Juan, the same evidence, it seems to me, points more strongly in
the opposite direction. My own observations in Chaco Canyon and my
interpretation of the data published by others lead to the conclusion
that Old Bonitian pottery developed out of Pueblo I practices inherited
from beyond the San Juan; that the more spectacular ceramic
art of the Late Bonitians likewise drew its inspiration from the north
and attained perfection in Chaco Canyon.

Since the National Geographic Society's Pueblo Bonito investigations
were concluded, Dr. Earl H. Morris has published his voluminous
study of La Plata Valley archeology, accompanied by Miss Shepard's
analysis of the pottery (Morris, 1939). Our immediate interest
in these two important reports lies in the fact that both incorporate
a few comparative notes on the pottery and ruins of Chaco Canyon.
Morris—and there is no one more intimately acquainted with the
prehistory of the entire San Juan basin—observes a varying degree
of "Chacoesqueness" in much of the early Pueblo III earthenware
he unearthed north of the San Juan; he regards as trade pieces the
rare pure Chaco pottery encountered, and considers the still rarer
Chaco-type ruins evidence of migrant colonists from the southern
center. He believes (pp. 205-206) pure Chaco, Chaco-like, and nonChaco
pottery contemporaneous in La Plata Valley and perhaps
throughout the entire northern district, and that Mesa Verde ware
came into being just as the pure Chaco made its last appearance. This
latter conviction is quite in harmony with our deductions at Pueblo
Bonito.

Miss Shepard analyzes pastes, paints, and firing methods. She
learns that La Plata Valley potters varied their ceramic practices
from time to time; that they favored iron oxide paint throughout one
period, organic paint in another. Powdered igneous rock was long
preferred as a tempering agent only to be partially displaced by
pulverized potsherds or a mixture of sherd and rock. Relying upon
geological data, Miss Shepard points out the probable places of origin
indicated by minerals in the paste. She believes the presence of andesite
in earthenware found in Chaco Canyon indicates trade from
the La Plata where andesite continued a prominent temper from

Basket Maker III to late Pueblo III times; she believes sanidine basalt
in the sherd temper of Chaco-like vessels exhumed in the La Plata
country evidences trade from the Chaco, since inclusions of this rock
frequently occur in Bonitian sherd-tempered pottery but are not
found in La Plata sherd-tempered types (ibid., pp. 279-281).

Now there is something of archeological heresy in all this. Heretofore,
lacking precise analytical methods, we had no reason to suspect
an extensive prehistoric commerce in pottery and especially in culinary
ware. But sanidine basalt was an important and increasingly popular
temper in cooking pots used at Pueblo Bonito and the only known
accessible source of the rock lies at Washington Pass, in the Chuska
Mountains, 50 air miles to the west. Bonitian women either walked
that distance and back to get the rock or they imported pots in which
it was the temper, unless a nearer outcropping remains to be discovered.
At the moment, importation seems the more logical explanation;
especially so since sanidine basalt is the strongly dominant
temper in cooking-pot fragments from ruins in the vicinity of the
rock's known source.

With every confidence in Miss Shepard and her methods of analysis,
I sincerely regret that circumstances prevented her thorough inquiry
into the makeup of Pueblo Bonito pottery. For me, the whole
problem still hangs in midair; I feel certain significant factors still
lie hidden. The sherd samples I placed before Miss Shepard in 1936
seemed at the time to offer a trustworthy cross section of local ceramic
history. But I am now dubious; I believe a larger, broader sample
should have been examined. I find myself hesitating to believe, for
example, that andesite in Chaco Canyon pottery always indicates trade
from north of the Rio San Juan. Andesite was the temper in 1 out
of 18 mineral-paint sherds in a sample of 43 from a Basket Maker III
site in upper Chaco Canyon; it was a minor tempering agent in both
culinary ware and mineral-paint black-on-white sherds from bottom
to top of Test II, through 12 feet of Old Bonitian household waste
under the West Court at Pueblo Bonito.

So, too, with the sanidine basalt which Miss Shepard believes may
indicate traffic in cooking pots from the Bennett Peak district at
Washington Pass to Pueblo Bonito and the subsequent utilization of
fragments of those pots as temper in Bonitian earthenware. Because
there are, to me, so many pertinent questions not quite convincingly
answered by these technological analyses, I should like to
see them extended to a larger representation of the successive Chaco
Canyon ware. And I should like very much to have Miss Shepard
conduct those analyses.

After reading my paragraphs summarizing the data she derived
from samples of our Pueblo Bonito sherds, Miss Shepard generously
submitted the following in rebuttal: