yd SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I47 



once dedicated to secret cult or religious practices. At midfloor is a 

 25-inch-diameter fireplace, rimmed with clay and accompanied by 

 a shallow, scooped-out basin, probably intended for ashes. Sometime 

 during occupancy of the room this fireplace was divided and its south 

 half lined with slab fragments on edge but thereafter continued in use. 



A floor-level ventilator 8 inches wide and 10 inches high pierced 

 the east wall of 328 directly above a subfloor, slab-lined ventilator 

 duct. This latter, 13 inches wide by 18 inches deep, was roofed at 

 floor level by sandstone slabs supported on small transverse poles; 

 at its proximal end, the customary air vent, 8 by 13 inches. The 

 probable air intake, in a masonry column 3 feet outside the east wall, 

 rises to West Court level, a vertical distance of over 7 feet. The 

 essential draft deflector between ventilator and fireplace, although 

 far out of line, must be the 6-stick section of wattlework joining 

 the south wall to a nearby ceiling prop (pi. 25, left). 



Questions of origin and association arise in connection with the 

 under-floor ventilator in Room 328. Is it an Old Bonitian concept or 

 the result of Late Bonitian influence? For unknown reasons this 

 particular example had been blocked with masonry directly beneath the 

 floor-level, east-wall ventilator. Otherwise it was entirely open when 

 found and so was that above. Within the limits of my experience at 

 Pueblo Bonito the subfloor type of ventilator was a prescribed feature 

 of Late Bonitian circular kivas. For this reason I am of the opinion 

 that those we discovered in Rooms 316 and 328 and the one Pepper 

 (ibid., p. 257) describes in Room 71 reflect influence exerted at the 

 time Late Bonitian masonry was introduced at the second-story level 

 or nearby. The walls of 328B are of second-type Late Bonitian com- 

 position while that at the northeast side of Room 316 was third-type 

 and so too, presumably, the rebuilt east end of Room 71. Here, in 71, 

 a 14-inch-wide ventilator duct extends from a central fireplace on an 

 earlier floor at depth of 6 inches to and beneath the southeast corner 

 of the room. 



That the priesthood of Pueblo Bonito, early and late, maintained 

 rectangular cult rooms as adjuncts to their circular kivas seems indis- 

 putable. Among others, there are Za (97), 249, 309, 315, 316, 328, and 

 351 each with built-in fixtures that set it apart from ordinary dwell- 

 ings. Then, most puzzling of all, there is the remnant of a quad- 

 rangular structure whose packed-clay floor we found outside and at 

 the east end of Room 28, 10^ feet below its second-story floor level. 

 The original foundation, here 21 inches high, had been built upon 

 that clay floor after its associated bench had been partially razed. 



That bench, of relatively crude stonework 24 inches wide by 

 34 inches high (the upper 4 inches raised and rounded at the front), 



