164 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I47 



In many instances the chosen sill-slab was placed and its ends 

 embedded in the jambs at time of construction, but occasionally, as 

 in the case of the door connecting Rooms 173 and 227, a later change 

 seemed desirable (pi. 15, left). Here the occupants clearly had re- 

 moved the lower portions of both jambs in order to seat an inverted 

 Old Bonitian tabular metate 21 inches wide. This substitute sill was 

 placed to project 3^ inches into Room 173 thus leaving on the oppo- 

 site side of the 25-inch-thick wall a difference of 7^ inches to be 

 leveled with slab fragments. Width at still level is 2^ inches greater 

 than at the lintels, an inverted-keystone practice Late Bonitian archi- 

 tects employed in decreasing frequency with each successive ad- 

 vance in the quality of their masonry. 



In this doorway between Rooms 173 and 227 secondary lintels at a 

 height of 28 inches, the space above packed with mud and sandstone 

 chips, suggest that the inside room was probably utilized for storage. 

 Normally, the reverse would be expected. In most instances, ground- 

 floor rooms in the outer row connect with those of the second row 

 but not with each other (fig. 6). As may be learned from Appen- 

 dix B, these connecting doors were customarily provided with 

 secondary lintels and jambs that slanted outward to support a door- 

 slab placed from the second row. This fact would, presumably, iden- 

 tify most outer-row rooms as granaries or storage places when Pueblo 

 Bonito was inhabited although inner rooms were sometimes similarly 

 equipped (pi. 13, left). 



For some reason not disclosed by our investigations, a surprisingly 

 large proportion of Late Bonitian wall openings, both doorways and 

 ventilators, were wholly or partially closed with masonry. I suspect 

 a climatic factor but this, after all, is purely a guess. The two 

 Room 259 doors, for example, had been sealed and plastered over 

 from within leaving access thereafter by means of a ceiling hatchway 

 of which we saw no certain trace. Four doors in Room 258 ; includ- 

 ing that in the southeast corner leading to Room 257 — the only first- 

 story diagonal doorway of which we have record in Pueblo Bonito — 

 likewise had been closed during occupancy. 



The corner door, providing access diagonally from one room to 

 another, was a tardy innovation of the Late Bonitians. I have record 

 of seven, all in this fourth-type addition and all in second-story rooms 

 with the exception of that last mentioned, connecting Rooms 257 and 

 258 (pi. 15, right). That this latter was an afterthought, built while 

 the two rooms were occupied, is established by the fact that con- 

 struction blocked a former ventilator between 258 and 259, a circum- 

 stance reminiscent of another partly blocked ventilator in Room 261. 



