NO. I ARCHITECTURE OF PUEBLO BONITO — JUDD I5I 



SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMPLEX 



Upon conclusion of our explorations I could find but one reasonable 

 explanation for this whole vast Northeast Foundation Complex: It 

 was built to support an extensive addition planned for Pueblo Bonito, 

 an addition altered repeatedly during the planning stage but abandoned 

 before construction really began. Late Bonitian architects needed, 

 or thought they needed, to enlarge their portion of the settlement a 

 third time. They began by building eastward from Room 297 a 

 series of foundations that abut the foundations or the stonework of 

 rooms previously erected. 



If my repetitious use of "foundation" be wearisome let me admit 

 an inability to describe such simple constructions by any other term. 

 They are foundations and no more. Composed of irregular chunks of 

 friable sandstone and an occasional dressed block from some razed 

 building, all packed in an abundance of mud mortar, these interlock- 

 ing units of the Northeast Foundation Complex differ in no wise from 

 Late Bonitian foundations within the pueblo. 



We traced some of them beneath the outer row of rooms and found 

 them ending against other and earher stonework. Sporadic fourth- 

 type masonry identifies the builders. Wherever finished masonry 

 occurs throughout these outlying foundations, with four exceptions 

 to be noted presently, it is fourth-type masonry and identical with 

 that comprising the existing outside wall of the pueblo from Room 

 297 east and south to 176. As the masonry of this outside wall 

 identifies its own foundations so do scattered sections of finished 

 fourth-type masonry identify the abandoned foundation complex. 

 The best example of finished masonry we observed during these 

 widespread excavations is that at Station 1 (pi. 48, right). It is of 

 superior fourth-type, 22 inches high by 26 inches thick and stands, 

 with a 3-inch-wide offset, upon a typical foundation 4 feet 7 inches 

 high and based 6 inches above a floor-like deposit of floodwater silt. 

 That foundation is abutted from the west by another, about half 

 as high but utterly devoid of wall-like stonework. 



At the west end of that abutting foundation is a kiva 8 feet 

 5 inches deep with bench 29 inches wide by 24 inches high, as 

 ascertained by a test pit in the northeast quarter, and an indicated 

 above-bench diameter of 23 feet 10 inches. My field notes identify 

 it as of third-type construction which is that of two other kivas 

 in this outlying area : One at the east end of Hillside Ruin and the 

 second, outside Room 179. This fact suggests the probability that 

 Late Bonitian planners of a fourth-type addition to their pueblo had 



