174 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



masonry before the wood on which it fed was wholly consnmed. 

 More detective work ! 



The third beam expedition, that of 1929, had its nose close to the 

 ground. With potsherds serving as guides, members of the party ' 

 visited a dozen or more sites of the desired age. Some of these were 

 too far from living pines to warrant serious consideration, for pine 

 only could be used with certainty in our studies and where pines now 

 stand there, most assuredly, pines formerly stood. Odier ruins were 

 so vast or so utterly demolished and overblown by drifting sand that 

 location of burned rooms was too largely a matter of chance, con- 

 sidering the time and funds at our disposal. But, from among the 

 number, two old villages down among the pine forests bordering the 

 Mogollon Rim, in Navajo County, Arizona, were finally selected. The 

 choice proved a happy one for, with a minimum of effort, these two 

 ruins, at Showlow and Pinedale, respectively, provided the charred 

 fragments of ceiling beams which convincingly bridged the gap sepa- 

 rating" the modern and the prehistoric ring sequences and brought to 

 successful conclusion investigations which had their inception in a 

 Washington conference on entirely unrelated matters. 



Thus, primarily through the researches of Doctor Douglass, aided 

 by several of my archeological co-workers, the National Geographic 

 Society has made an unparalleled contribution by extending United 

 States history nearly six centuries beyond Columbus' voyage of 1492. 

 The earliest beam recovered from Pueblo Bonito was cut in A. D. 

 919, the very year when German nobles were choosing Henry I as 

 their king ; the latest timber represented in our collection from this 

 ruin was felled in 1130. For reasons quite unknown to us the Boniti- 

 ans developed a reconstruction complex about A. D. 1070 and, wholly 

 unconscious of the ruthless sword William the Conqueror was then 

 swinging throughout England, instituted extensive alterations within 

 their four-storied, communal home in Chaco Canyon. Like other 

 Pueblo groups, the Bonitians were peaceful farmer-folk; they prac- 

 ticed a democratic form of self government 700 years before the 

 Pilgrim Fathers dropped anchor oft" Provincetown in 1620. The 



^ Dr. Douglass and the writer ; Dr. Harold S. Colton, Director of the Museum 

 of Northern Arizona, at Flagstaff, and Lyndon L. Hargrave of the same insti- 

 tution. The services of Mr. Hargrave, well versed in Hopi prehistory, 

 were generously placed at our disposal by Dr. Colton and his Board of Trustees — 

 a courtesy inadequately acknowledged by this brief reference. 



The later excavations at Showlow and Pinedale were supervised by Mr. Emil 

 W. Haury, of Arizona State University ; those at Wide Ruin and Kokopnyama, 

 by Mr. Hargrave and his assistant, Mr. E. C. Greene, Jr. 



