University of Virginia Library

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMPLEX

Upon conclusion of our explorations I could find but one reasonable
explanation for this whole vast Northeast Foundation Complex: It
was built to support an extensive addition planned for Pueblo Bonito,
an addition altered repeatedly during the planning stage but abandoned
before construction really began. Late Bonitian architects needed,
or thought they needed, to enlarge their portion of the settlement a
third time. They began by building eastward from Room 297 a
series of foundations that abut the foundations or the stonework of
rooms previously erected.

If my repetitious use of "foundation" be wearisome let me admit
an inability to describe such simple constructions by any other term.
They are foundations and no more. Composed of irregular chunks of
friable sandstone and an occasional dressed block from some razed
building, all packed in an abundance of mud mortar, these interlocking
units of the Northeast Foundation Complex differ in no wise from
Late Bonitian foundations within the pueblo.

We traced some of them beneath the outer row of rooms and found
them ending against other and earlier stonework. Sporadic fourthtype
masonry identifies the builders. Wherever finished masonry
occurs throughout these outlying foundations, with four exceptions
to be noted presently, it is fourth-type masonry and identical with
that comprising the existing outside wall of the pueblo from Room
297 east and south to 176. As the masonry of this outside wall
identifies its own foundations so do scattered sections of finished
fourth-type masonry identify the abandoned foundation complex.

The best example of finished masonry we observed during these
widespread excavations is that at Station 1 (pl. 48, right). It is of
superior fourth-type, 22 inches high by 26 inches thick and stands,
with a 3-inch-wide offset, upon a typical foundation 4 feet 7 inches
high and based 6 inches above a floor-like deposit of floodwater silt.
That foundation is abutted from the west by another, about half
as high but utterly devoid of wall-like stonework.

At the west end of that abutting foundation is a kiva 8 feet
5 inches deep with bench 29 inches wide by 24 inches high, as
ascertained by a test pit in the northeast quarter, and an indicated
above-bench diameter of 23 feet 10 inches. My field notes identify
it as of third-type construction which is that of two other kivas
in this outlying area: One at the east end of Hillside Ruin and the
second, outside Room 179. This fact suggests the probability that
Late Bonitian planners of a fourth-type addition to their pueblo had

previously demolished several third-type kivas to obtain building
material.

Additional sections of fourth-type masonry 3-9 inches high survive
at Stations 3, 4, 6, and 7, at various places identified by the letter
"x" on our chart of the Complex (fig. 11) including the masonry
box outside Room 186, an 18-inch-wide east-west wall remnant a
foot and a half under the floors of Rooms 256 and 257, a subfloor
foundation similarly oriented in Room 185, and a north-south wall
section paralleling the west side of 244 at a distance of 30 inches.

The exposure bared at Station 6 is especially puzzling in that a
facing of banded fourth-type masonry continuing north from
Station 4 is here screened by an over-wall of friable sandstone and
mud that looks somewhat finished externally but is, nevertheless,
foundation-like throughout. At its north end this close-fitting overwall
is buried under 3 feet 9 inches of blown sand in which we noted
successive gravel lenses and a scattering of clay pellets.

Station 7 is unique in that here 8 inches of fourth-type masonry
remain upon a 26-inch-high foundation that consists of dressed
friable sandstone chinked after the fashion of second-type stonework,
its base 5 feet 4 inches below the present surface. On the east
side of this composite, its bottom at a depth of 6½ feet, is a 3-foot pile
of constructional waste—the most likely indication of deliberate wallrazing
we noted throughout the whole Complex.

This single example of second-type masonry—there may well be
others we did not come upon—and three known kivas constructed in
what I recorded as third-type provide further evidence that the
Late Bonitians did not hesitate to tear down still useful structures
when building materials were required for others in prospect. That
salvaged materials at hand sometimes prompted a workman to do a bit
of wall-building on his own seems only natural—a brief respite from
the tedium of shaping foundations from mud and broken rock.

Figure 11 shows only that portion of the Northeast Foundation
Complex we actually uncovered. We have no knowledge of what still
lies buried. A cross section (D-46) between "A," on a main eastwest
foundation outside Room 185, and a like symbol near Station 2
at the east end of our trenching operations does not, in my opinion,
contribute enough information to justify its reproduction herein. It
remains on file at the U. S. National Museum together with all other
diagrams and field notes of the Pueblo Bonito Expeditions. I might
add, however, that 12 deep silt layers shown on that cross section lie
at practically the same level, no more than 8 inches apart vertically.

Plate 38

Left: In the
northwest corner of
Room 298 Old
Bonitian masonry
abuts the external
angle of Room 13.

(Photograph by
Neil M. Judd,
1923.)

Right: Over 19
feet of salvagedstone
masonry rises
above floor level in
Room 239.

(Photograph by
O. C. Havens,
1921.)

Plate 39

A prehistoric stairway on the east side of the rincon
north of Chettro Kettle.

(Original sketch by W. H. Jackson, 1877.)

Since 1877 the lower portion of Jackson's stairway has slumped
away but toe-holds remain at the left, unfinished steps at upper
right.

(Photograph by Neil M. Judd, 1927.)

Cleared "road," south cliff opposite Chettro Kettle. Pueblo Alto on skyline above
standing figure.

Groove pecked in sandstone outcropping along "road" between Pueblo Alto and
Chettro Kettle.

Plate 40

Pecked steps on "road" between Pueblo Alto and Chettro Kettle.

(Photographs by Neil M. Judd, 1926.)

The Late Bonitians' third and final addition to the pueblo overlies units of the
Northeast Foundation Complex. National Geographic Society repairs appear in the
4-story wall at right. (Photograph by E. L. Wisherd, 1923.)

Plate 41

Foundations for the Northeast Complex were ordinary foundations covered by sand
and silt. (Photograph by O. C. Havens, 1925.)

Plate 42

Left: Late Bonitian
masonry supported
a terrace
under the Bracedup
Cliff and a bank
of adobe mud buttressed
the masonry.

Right: A stonewalled
repository
stood upon units
of the Northeast
Foundation Complex
outside Room
186.

(Photographs by
O. C. Havens,
1923.)

Fourth-type veneering overlaps the second-type exterior of the unnumbered room next
east of 297. Below, part of the abandoned Northeast Complex.

(Photograph by Thomas Nebbia, 1959.)

Plate 43

The Northeast Foundation Complex began as a thin wedge against the plastered
second-type exterior of Room 297.

(Photograph by O. C. Havens, 1925.)

Plate 44

Left: Long after
Pueblo Bonito was
abandoned sandstone
fallen from
the Braced-up Cliff
endangered the village.
An earlier fall
had caused a unit
of the Northeast
Complex to rise in
crossing.

Right: At its extreme
west end the
Northeast Foundation
Complex abuts
the second-type masonry
of Room 297.
National Geographic
Society repairs,
above.

(Photographs by
Neil M. Judd,
1923.)

View of the Northeast Foundation Complex from the Braced-up Cliff. In left
foreground, stones piled for wall repairs; beyond, 3 tests against west side of Hillside
Ruin.

Plate 45

The Northeast Foundation Complex from the northeast cliff. Pueblo Bonito in the
background, with National Park Service cementwork around Kivas D and F.

(Photographs by O. C. Havens, 1925.)

After preparing this extensive foundation complex for an addition
they never built, the Late Bonitian architects abruptly abandoned
their plans in favor of a substitute addition. This latter, more conservative
in conception, began where the rejected series was started,
outside Room 297, extending thence in a single row to Room 186
and thereafter, in broader plan east and south to the corner of the
pueblo.