144 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I47 



lower). We followed them in both directions — west to their point of 

 beginning and eastward until we tired of the pursuit. 



The Complex began as a 22-inch-high wedge built against the 

 plastered second-type masonry of Room 297 (pi. 43, lower). The 

 extreme tip of the wedge, which collapsed during excavation, had 

 been built upon 9 inches of blown sand covering 23 inches of com- 

 pacted constructional debris — abode droppings and sandstone chips 

 left by the builders of the second-type wall. Adobe plaster still 

 adhered to that wall, 54 inches of plaster from foundation to top of 

 the abutting 22-inch-high wedge. Above the wedge, weathering had 

 erased the plaster, and thereafter an additional 2 feet of sand had 

 accumulated. 



At this point the Room 297 foundation, if any, was deeply recessed, 

 but an apparent substitute lay 4 inches outside and at the same level. 

 To explore this feature further, we made a second test at the north- 

 west corner of 297 and here the substitute was missing while the 

 room foundation, 16 inches high and offset 3 inches, had been built 

 over and between massive sandstone blocks fallen from the north cliff 

 in pre-Bonito times. Another such block was exposed a few feet to 

 the east and beyond it, outside Room 188 and 4-4^ feet below the 

 surface as we found it, a third part of that ancient rockfall had 

 caused one of the north-south units to lift slightly as it crossed 

 (pi. 44, left). 



Because the intended foundations were built over and around 

 them these huge blocks of fallen sandstone obviously gave the 

 town planners small concern. But long years later, after Pueblo 

 Bonito had been built and abandoned, another huge section crashed 

 down from the same source, the west end of the Braced-up Cliff, and 

 one jagged block rolled dangerously close to the northwest corner 

 of Room 189 before coming to rest (pi. 44, left). 



Beneath broken masonry was a shallow layer of blown sand 

 that included scraps of burned wood and another 20 inches of 

 constructional waste thinning out to zero at a distance of 10 feet. 

 All this is now buried under wreckage of the Braced-up Cliff itself 

 which finally fell, as the Bonitians feared it might, and laid waste 

 the whole northeast quarter of their famous pueblo (Judd, 1959^). 

 Some 80 feet east of Room 297 a second unit of the Foundation 

 Complex emerges from under the outer wall to parallel the first unit 

 at a distance of 8 feet. The two are joined by a succession of 

 north-south foundations spaced as though for rooms comparable in 

 floor area to those in the second row of the pueblo. Room 297 east to 



