PREHISTORIC PUEBLO BONITO, NEW ^lEXICO 

 By NEIL M. JUDD, 



Curator, Division of American Archeology, U. S. N^afiona! Museum 



Since 1920, annual explorations' have been pursued vuider the 

 auspices of the National Geographic Society in Pueblo Bonito, at 

 once the largest, oldest and most important of the 17 major ruins 

 comprising Chaco Canyon National Monument, northwestern New 

 Mexico. These annual ex])lorations. which I have had the pleasure of 

 directing, are now concluded and preparation of the final reports 

 recording the observations made is well under way. 



Pueblo Bonito is not only the most important ruin in Chaco Canyon 

 but it is. perhaps, the most important structure of its period in the 

 entire Southwest. No other Pueblo village of pre-Spanish times so 

 far as we are aware exhibits in equal degree the high development in 

 civic organization, in architecture and the lesser cultural arts, so 

 evident at Pueblo Bonito. Here is rejn-esented the very acme of pre- 

 historic Pueljlo civilization. Here are the crumbling walls of a vast 

 communal settlement — an aboriginal apartment house — whose 500 or 

 more connecting rooms, arranged in four terraced stories, sheltered 

 no less than 1,200 individuals. These were farmers, tillers of the desert 

 soil ; their wide-spreading fields of corn, beans, and squash were 

 watered by spring and mid-summer floods that poured oft' the bor- 

 dering cliffs to be caught and diverted through man-made channels 

 to areas of cultivation. But in time these fertile lands were rendered 

 barren through thoughtless sacrifice of neighboring, limited forests 

 to the ambitious building programs of the villagers. With the forest 

 growth felled, arroyos formed ; fields were destroyed. Our archeologi- 

 cal evidence tends to show that altered geophysical conditions in Chaco 

 Canyon was one of two major factors contributing to the gradual 

 decline of Pueblo Bonito and its final aliandonment api)roximately 

 1,000 years ago. 



The Pueblo Bonito explorations of the National Geogra])hic So- 

 ciety were brought to an end in 1926 and the season which followed 

 was devoted wholly to preparation of the writer's final reports. But 

 occasional opportunity was found for re-examination of the canyon 

 walls and the table lands that stretch north and south from the Rio 



' Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 72, Nos. 6 & 15 ; Vol. 74, No. 5 ; Vol. 76, No. 10; 

 Vol. 77, No. 2 ; Vol. 78, Nos. i & 7. 



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