NO. I ARCHITECTURE OF PUEBLO BONITO JUDD 1 29 



The West Mound had a north retaining wall as well as one on the 

 south side. Between that on the north and Room 136 was a 12-foot- 

 deep floodwater channel, filled with sand, silt, and household sweep- 

 ings, the bottom of it about 8 feet below the valley plain (fig. 7). 

 Two feet 4 inches north of 136 we came unexpectedly upon the inner 

 south face of Room 350, an unusual structure 5^ feet deep with 

 an unrimmed fireplace and a northeast-corner ventilator shaft rising 

 to court level. On the floor, a plain half-gourd ladle (U.S.N.M. 

 No. 336372) and several late hachured potsherds. 



Room 351, another sunken chamber, was separated from 350 by a 

 14-inch-thick masonry wall (pi. 64, lower). Like 350, Room 351 was 

 provided with an unrimmed fireplace and a northeast-corner venti- 

 lator. Unlike that in 350, however, the Room 351 ventilator had an ex- 

 ternal air shaft. Although crude and unusual, both rooms were prob- 

 ably of late construction; both were decorated inside. Room 351 by a 

 white rectangle painted with seven "saw teeth" on the upper edge and 

 350, with two human hands, a human foot, and miscellaneous lines 

 carelessly incised on the south and west wall plaster. 



North of 351 our trench exposed the first of two pairs of cross- 

 court walls described in the previous chapter, the pavement between 

 being only 2 feet beneath the surface. Above Station 255 on figure 7 

 sandstone slabs a foot high marked the edge of a P. I pit-house 

 floor 1 1 feet 9 inches below the Court surface or 6 feet below the level 

 of the plain in midvalley. Abutting the north side of those slabs were 

 the remains of a masonry wall subsequently recognized as the south 

 arc of a Great Kiva, its floor at a depth of 10 feet 2 inches. 



Our 5-foot- wide trench sliced through that Great Kiva just east 

 of its middle line, exposing two masonry pillars and the so-called 

 "vaults" between. The north bench, stripped of its facing stones, 

 measured 25 inches wide by 24 inches high. A wet-weather surface 

 rather than a second floor extended south at bench level. Here, at the 

 north, the main wall had been razed 3 inches above its bench ; what 

 was left had been buried under a dump of constructional debris and a 

 thick layer of shale fragments, the two sloping down sharply from the 

 top of an east- west wall. That wall, 7 feet 2 inches high including 

 foundation, had been razed 2^ feet below the present Court surface 

 and was only one among several architectural features revealed by our 

 West Court trench. 



Time meant but little to a prehistoric Indian, but our un- 

 anticipated Great Kiva represented a vast expenditure of labor. In 

 addition to the north and south arcs bared by our trench we de- 



