NO. I ARCHITECTURE OF PUEBLO BONITO JUDD 6"] 



KIVAS OF OLD BONITO 



The south- wall foundation of Room 83 protruded 6-12 inches and 

 rested directly upon the arc of a partially razed Old Bonitian kiva 

 as it curved south, presumably to be demolished by the Late Bonitian 

 builders of Kiva N, and west beneath the floors of Rooms 307 and 

 309, We do not know when that old kiva was razed but we do know 

 that Old Bonitian Room 307 was built later than others of its kind 

 because, of 694 potsherds from a limited test pit beneath the floor, 8 

 were Late Hachure, 4 were Chaco-San Juan or McElmo Black-on- 

 white, and 366, or 52.8 percent. Corrugated-coil Culinary. 



As Pepper (ibid., p. 269) describes it that Old Bonitian kiva under 

 Room 83 was bowl-shaped with an encircling bench 38 inches high, 

 well plastered and its front edge rounded. Pepper's figure 1 14 shows 

 less than one-quarter of the bench but no visible pilaster. With 

 aboriginal perspicacity the builders incorporated in that bench a siza- 

 ble boulder, part of an earlier cliff- fall, and spread adobe mud upon 

 the soft sand that had drifted against it — sand and mud that eventu- 

 ally settled and left a shallow depression. Clean sand lay immediately 

 under the kiva floor, 8 feet below that of Room 83. 



We encountered a companion Old Bonitian kiva, rather the north 

 half of one, during trenching operations in the northwest corner of 

 the East Court (fig. 3). Its stonework, averaging 14 inches thick, 

 was typical : roughly spalled sandstone blocks, unevenly but thickly 

 plastered, fingerprinted all over, and sooted. Its west side, with an 

 outward slope of 12^ degrees, rises 12 feet above the floor and partly 

 underlies the unnumbered room south of 211 (17); on the east side, 

 the wall stands only 10 feet 3 inches, about 4^ feet below the Court 

 surface. Indicated diameters are: At floor level, 22^ feet; above 

 bench, 26 feet 7 inches ; at wall top, 31 feet 10 inches. 



An encircling bench, 25 inches high and averaging 34 inches wide, 

 was surfaced with sandstone slabs and plastered. On it, in the por- 

 tion we exposed, were the remains of two pilasters, each consisting 

 of small sandstone chips set in adobe mud and enclosing a 6-inch log 

 that lay flat upon the slab surface, its butt end inserted into the 

 masonry and packed about with shale (pi. 23, right). The two aver- 

 aged 10^ inches wide by 6^ inches high, their forward ends set back 

 7-8 inches. We saw no trace of offerings. Here, then, as with that 

 under Room 83, a 4-pilaster kiva is indicated. Plaster adhered to 

 the bench face, whitened to floor level but continuing an additional 

 13 inches to an earlier floor or work surface. Spread upon that 

 lower floor was a 5-inch layer of shale and 8 inches of adobe mortar 



