14 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I47 



Kidder's still useful, but rarely used, term "proto-Mesa Verde" 

 (Kidder, 1924, p. 67). And I have since come to think of both as 

 more or less synonymous with McElmo Black-on-white. 



Classic Mesa Verde with its thick- walled bowls and flattened rims, 

 its superb polish, and precisely executed designs, reached Chaco 

 Canyon just as the high local culture was on the way out. Other late 

 imports such as Houck, Kayenta, and Chaves Pass polychrome, 

 Mimbres and Tularosa Coil (Judd, 1921, p. 110), and a few frag- 

 ments of Navaho or Apache conical-base pots were also present. A 

 black-on-red variety, or perhaps two varieties since Amsden and 

 Roberts divided the lot by color, puzzled us at the time because 

 sherds from early rubbish included fragments with hachured designs 

 and ticked rims. 



What we called "Mesa Verde," including a few fragments of 

 undeniable Classic, comprised only 0.4 percent of the 208,188 sherds 

 Roberts and Amsden tabulated at Pueblo Bonito, while our Chaco- 

 San Juan group made up 6.6 percent of the total. Of 1,830 potsherds 

 recovered during excavation of Kiva A, 22.6 percent were Chaco-San 

 Juan and 10.4 percent Mesa Verde, but, among those from a limited 

 subfloor test in the same chamber, percentages were 8.1 and 2.7, 

 respectively. Four Chaco-San Juan sherds among 694 from a sub- 

 floor test pit show that Old Bonitian Room 307 was built later than 

 others of its kind. 



While presenting these and other data gathered within the pueblo 

 and without, I desire once again to stress the significant fact that 

 no fragment of Straight-line Hachure, most widely cited element on 

 Chaco Canyon pottery, was recovered below Layer C, 4 feet 2 inches 

 from the surface in 12- foot-deep Test 2. This is equally true for 

 Corrugated-coil Culinary and our Chaco-San Juan variety. Below 

 Layer C every painted sherd was decorated with a black mineral paint 

 and most of them were exclusively sherd-tempered. Sherd temper 

 and mineral paint unite this pottery from the lower 8 feet of Test 2, 

 the pottery of Old Bonito. Associated culinary vessels were rock- or 

 sand-tempered, with smooth bodies and banded necks. 



There are those who will disagree; but to me it seems obvious 

 that a typological break occurs at this 8-foot level; that makers of 

 a different pottery complex came to dwell at Pueblo Bonito after Old 

 Bonitian household waste had accumulated to a depth of 8 feet or 

 more. For myself only, the gray-paste, mineral-paint, black-on-white 

 pottery from that lower 8 feet, the "Transitional," remains a single 

 ware indistinguishable in composition and ornamentation from the 



