70 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I47 



latter, Z7 inches wide and 28 inches high, had been repeatedly plas- 

 tered and whitened ; on it we noted the side of a demolished pilaster, 

 set back 4 inches from the edge, but dimensions and makeup unknown. 

 The outer or convex curve of this old kiva likewise had been plas- 

 tered and whitewashed. 



I hesitate to identify whitewashing of kiva stonework and especially 

 of kiva benches as an Old Bonitian trait, but there may be significance 

 in the fact that such treatment was commonplace among our Old 

 Bonitians. Incised figures such as those in Room 97 (3a) are re- 

 ported less frequently. Figures chalked on brown plaster and 3- foot 

 whitewashed dados or a 2- foot white band above a brown dado are, 

 apparently, among decorative concepts of the Late Bonitians. 



The sandstone boulder utilized in the old kiva under Room 83 

 (Pepper, ibid., p. 269) is only one of several that together provide 

 evidence of a prodigious rock- fall from the north cliff sometime 

 prior to the beginning of Old Bonito. Those boulders were already 

 there and the old folk simply built over and around them. There 

 is one under Room 83; another was incorporated in the wall of a 

 storage bin in Room 85, adjoining (ibid., p. 282). We noted like 

 boulders A\ feet beneath the floor of Kiva N or 14 feet below approxi- 

 mate East Court level ; we observed others underneath wall founda- 

 tions in Old Bonitian Rooms 87, 296, and 298 ; still others were seen 

 outside the pueblo where Late Bonitian architects, in their turn, had 

 built foundations over and around massive blocks of cliff sandstone 

 (see Judd, 1959&). Quite obviously a sizable section of north canyon 

 wall had given way and cast its jagged fragments forward a hundred 

 feet or more long before the Old Bonitians came to live here. 



The bowl-shaped kiva these Old Bonitians built in front of their 

 living room, 85, eventually was abandoned and Rooms 83 and 307 

 were erected above its remains. It seems probable these replacements 

 were forced by Late Bonitian architects who were already active here- 

 about, as witness the Late Bonitian potsherds we recovered under 

 the floor of Room 307 and witness, too, the Late Bonitian recon- 

 struction program that began in Rooms 71, 78, and 86 and continued 

 east therefrom. 



LATE BONITIAN REPLACEMENTS 



Old Bonitian 71, 78, and 86 were formerly adjoined on the east by 

 their contemporaries, Rooms 69, 80, and 87, but these latter had been 

 demolished during the Late Bonitian modernizing program and the 

 wreckage of their partially razed walls was left where it fell and sub- 



