HILLSIDE RUIN
What we called "Hillside Ruin" is a fairly late settlement that
extends from a sandstone outcropping at the end of the Braced-up
Cliff terrace eastward approximately 300 feet to another outcropping.
It probably has since received other names from other sources.
Simpson (1850, p. 81) barely mentions the site; Jackson (1878,
p. 442) describes it as "a mass of ruins measuring 135 by 75 feet"
with two circular rooms in the middle and an east-side wall about
300 feet long. We did not find this latter, our examination of the
site being restricted to three narrow exploratory trenches at the
west end, partial exposure of the irregular south front, and limited
examination of one kiva.
This kiva, situated near the east sandstone outcropping, has
an indicated above-bench diameter of 24 feet 8 inches and its masonry,
as I described it at the time, approaches but does not quite equal
our third type at Pueblo Bonito. Elsewhere, what little Hillside
Ruin masonry we laid bare is decidedly non-Bonitian and rests
upon a 7-inch-high adobe foundation that overlies extended units
of our Northeast Foundation Complex. Hillside Ruin, later than
Pueblo Bonito, stands upon a low elevation overlooking the network
of foundations presently under consideration. I believe it to have
been relatively short-lived and it clearly has been stripped of accessible
building stones. Surface sherds I gathered are few in number and
the black-on-white fragments are best described as proto-Mesa Verde.
