University of Virginia Library

PRINCIPAL EAST-WEST FOUNDATIONS

One of the major east-west foundations, 28 inches wide and 33
inches high where it abuts, subfloor, the inner west corner of Room
185, passes under the outside wall of that room and continues eastward
more than 200 feet. This foundation and others of its kind are
joined by lesser units to outline an assemblage of room-size areas
and what obviously was intended as the foundation for a circular
kiva. A test outside the southeast arc of this latter exposed a foundation
angle both sides of which were built upon a smooth silt surface
at depth of 4 feet 5 inches; a foot or more of adobe droppings lay
upon that surface and stratified sand above, the upper 2 inches dark
with humus.

This kiva outline, lacking finished masonry inside and out, is
bisected by another major foundation that extends eastward past the
jutting front of Hillside Ruin to an end we did not seek. In its
course, however, this major foundation, here 58 inches high, is
overlain by another kiva outline whose overall width of 7 feet
suggests both bench and outer wall. The presumed bench face rests
upon a 2-inch-thick adobe floor, 3 inches of sand, and an underlying
thin layer of shale. Cut into the floor is a typical Chaco-type
ventilator duct, 23 inches in both width and depth by 7 feet long,
neatly lined with laminate sandstone. Its associated shaft, of thirdtype

masonry and 22 inches square inside, stands 15½ feet from
the north end of the duct and intrudes upon the incomplete outline
of another and earlier kiva.

Outside the first of these two kiva foundations, but inside one
presumably intended for its east enclosing wall, is a rectangular
firebox, 29 by 26 inches and 25 inches deep. Its slab lining rises
full height on the east side but is topped on the other three by
8-10 inches of masonry. Despite the foundation between, this sunken
firebox probably was associated with the six next to be considered,
five of them quadrangular and one circular.

These six (pl. 47, lower) were ranged along the south side of
the major east-west foundation that underlies the Chaco-type kiva
outline noted above. The single circular firebox measures 43 inches
deep by 42 inches in diameter at the top and 50 inches at the bottom,
while the other five vary in size from 33 by 38 inches (No. 3) to 41
by 54 inches (No. 2) and in depth from 16 inches (No. 5) to 29
inches (No. 1). All six are rudely constructed with walls 4-12 inches
thick that top off at approximately the same level as the east-west
foundation. Excess mortar inside the five rectangular pits was
smeared over the stonework; that in the circular one was fingerpressed
between stones. All six were filled with sand reddened by
heat and containing minute particles of charcoal but no discernible
wood ash; there was no fusing of mortar and no fragment of pottery
or bone in either. My guess is that the entire group, seven in number,
was in some fashion related to Hillside Ruin, but this is purely a
guess.

A test pit between Nos. 2 and 3 disclosed a smooth adobe
surface at depth of 58 inches and, above it, the ever-present
constructional debris and blown sand. In the partially explored
area immediately to the south we happened upon a small contemporary
dump of this constructional waste, but I could see no point in
searching further. All the foundations we had previously uncovered
were pretty much alike. They were built of mud mortar and roughly
spalled chunks of friable sandstone; they were foundations and nothing
else. Here and there a bit of finished masonry is to be seen, the
visible effort of an impatient mason. But nowhere in the whole
Complex did we find an item of cultural interest other than occasional
discarded hammerstones and potsherds. Of these only one
seemed to justify a catalog number, the fragment of a black-on-white
female effigy with half-inch black squares on the belly (U.S.N.M.
No. 336089).

The main east-west foundations may have been constructed first
for they are generally wider and higher than other units and they
often stand directly upon the ever-present underlying silt layer. In
contrast, the abutting lesser units rest upon 20-24 inches of sand overlying
the silt strata. In 1923 when we first came upon these buried
surfaces I invariably described them as "pavements" because they
seemed too smooth to be of natural origin but later, after Bryan's
1924 and 1925 geological observations and my own independent findings,
it became obvious each exposure was no more than a record of
silt transported and deposited by sluggish floodwaters. The overburden
might differ in depth and composition but the underlying layer
remained the same, floodwater silt.

Jackson (1878, p. 442) notes an east-side wall extending south
300 feet from Hillside Ruin to meet at right angles another wall 180
feet east of Pueblo Bonito. Although this meeting is clearly indicated
on his restoration of Pueblo Bonito (pl. 49, upper), I suspect an error
on the part of the lithographer. Jackson was not given to erroneous
observations. Three hundred feet from Hillside Ruin, or even from
the cliff behind, would put the intersection well south of the lone wall
foundation we traced 509 feet east (E 23° N) from Room 176.

McNitt (1957, p. 175) quotes his informant to the effect that
building stone for the Wetherill residence and store "was brought
from a tumbled prehistoric wall just east of Bonito," a recollection
that may account for the irregular top of the lone foundation. We
did not explore the considerable area between this bordering foundation
and the series fronting Hillside Ruin, but we ran several trenches
at the east end and, for ready reference, assigned identifying numbers
here and there (fig. 11).

From Station 2, where it ends with a height of 14 inches and a
width of 24, our lone bordering foundation extends arrow-straight
toward the southeast corner of Pueblo Bonito. Its broken east end,
10 inches under the surface, is surrounded by blown sand; no constructional
debris is apparent. Built of roughly fractured friable
sandstone, this long wall-like foundation overlies every other on its
path, including 22 inches of excellent fourth-type masonry at Station
3, and therefore is later than they. It measures 24 inches wide by
14 inches high at Station 2 and the same at Station 5 but a few feet
further west the foundation stands 26 inches high and comes to the
present surface (pl. 48, left). It is not improbable that this section,
at least, appeared as a free wall in Jackson's time.

At Station 4, at the lower end of a long narrow room that extends

north to Station 6, a pair of rude 3-course foundations averaging only
8 inches high abuts 19 inches of good fourth-type masonry above its
own foot-high foundation (pl. 49, lower). The lateness of the pair
is thus established as they curve away to the south and west until
the north member comes to an abrupt end approximately 150 feet
from its beginning. Here, at Station 8, this north member is reduced
to a mere two courses, its base 20-odd inches below the surface.

Beneath this 2-course foundation lie 3 feet of sandy clay containing
conspicuous, fragmented chunks of adobe and, below that, an
additional 2 feet of compacted sand. In our test pit at this point,
7 feet 4 inches deep, neither sandstone spalls nor potsherds were
noted below the foundation, but sherds did occur, unidentified in
my notes, in the sand above. The south member of the pair ends
about 50 feet short of Station 8 at which point they are 25 inches
apart, average 16 inches wide by 10 inches high, and are covered by
10 inches of blown sand, as at Stations 2 and 4.

Purely out of curiosity we cut a shallow trench alongside the
paired foundations below Station 4. When we found they had been
built upon water-laid sand and silt we abandoned the experiment in
favor of a second trench, dug to intersect the two about midway
between Stations 4 and 8. The results, which we dubbed "The Far
East Trench" (fig. 24), proved unexpectedly illuminating. Underneath
the pair, quantities of indurated sand and sandy adobe extended
northward to merge with the fill of an undeniable watercourse.
That fill, chiefly debris of reconstruction—sandstone fragments and
chunks of adobe mortar from razed walls—had been carried out and
dumped into an unwanted channel where, in due course, all was
blanketed by Chaco Canyon's ever-present blown sand.

Too late I realized our "Far East" trench should have been
continued to cross the long wall-like foundation for this latter
obviously was built to meet some definite purpose. Whether that
purpose was in any way related to the debris-filled channel nearby
or to the silt layers we encountered in every 5-foot-deep test made
throughout the Northeast Foundation Complex is a question that remains
unanswered. Floodwaters from the rincon back of Chettro
Kettle formerly were discharged down valley, and our lone wall could
have been designed to divert such waters away from the village as
was, presumably, one 5 feet under the present surface and extending
100 feet upcanyon from Pueblo del Arroyo (Judd, 1959a, p. 120).
The same explanation does not, of course, apply to a similar rock wall
reaching eastward from Pueblo Alto.