NO. I ARCHITECTURE OF PUEBLO BONITO — JUDD 97 



contained a southeast corner hearth, 18 inches deep, unlined and 

 unrimmed. On this same earher floor, with no indication of inten- 

 tional burial, we found the skeleton of a thick-billed parrot (Rhyn- 

 chopsitta pachyrhyncha) , imported from near the Arizona-Mexico 

 border. While imprisoned, its sternum had become deformed by im- 

 proper food or lack of sunlight, or both. 



The 7-inch fill between floors contained a number of Corrugated- 

 coil potsherds and fragments of bowls ornamented with designs in 

 Chaco hachure — evidence these well-known Pueblo III types of 

 domestic earthenware were present during or before construction 

 of Room 308. Wall masonry continues an average of 6 inches below 

 the earlier floor and we did not dig deeper. 



Room 309 was certainly never designed for secular use. A plas- 

 tered masonry block partially screens its northwest corner and the 

 other three are occupied by quarter-circle enclosures whose floor 

 areas vary from 6 inches above that of the room (NE) to 29 inches 

 below (SW) and here an earlier floor lies 9 inches deeper (fig. 12). 

 A bench of second-type masonry 9 inches wide by 7 inches high 

 extends lengthwise of the east wall with a much plastered "shelf" or 

 "seat" at its south end and, fronting this latter, an enclosure 9 inches 

 deep but rimmed on the concave side by a 7-inch-wide offset 5 inches 

 high (pi. 31, upper). 



Opposite, in the northeast corner, a convex wall curves out and 

 meets two plastered masonry buttresses, one against the north wall 

 and one upon the east bench, thus enclosing an area frequently re- 

 paved and once ceiled by thin pine boards when the enclosed space 

 was 33 inches deeper. Adjoining this area on the south and against 

 the plastered face of the bench at its original height (38") was a 

 masonry-lined feature, 29 inches deep, I inexplicably recorded as a 

 "bin." Its purpose is unknown. 



Close in the southwest corner of 309 is another quarter-circle 

 feature also 29 inches deep, masonry-lined and plastered, its south 

 and west sides continuing to an earlier floor at 38 inches. Midway 

 of its concave side and 8 inches above its floor is a neat little niche, 

 plastered but empty. Where the feature's east arm abuts the deeper 

 south side of the room a floor-level ventilator opens through to 

 connect with an external shaft built against the plastered exterior. 

 Within the room, between ventilator and a masonry screen or deflec- 

 tor, the floor is 2 inches higher, and here we found the skeletons of an 

 infant and a macaw {Ara macao). The fact may be purely fortuitous 

 but three other macaw skeletons and that of an infant were recovered 

 from shallow pits in Old Bonitian Room 306, north of 308. 



