NO. I ARCHITECTURE OF PUEBLO BONITO — JUDD 205 



floor at depth of 20 inches and partly underlying the west side of 

 the southeast vault was a fireplace measuring 16 by 28 inches and 

 14 inches deep. A couple feet west of this but on an ill-defined sur- 

 face 3 feet deeper, we encountered parallel walls of third-type 

 masonry 22 inches apart and about 29 inches high, one 17 inches 

 thick and the other 20. Still another wall fragment, 18 inches high, 

 its broken end abutted by the foundation under the southeast pillar, 

 extended thence west beneath the Kiva A fireplace on a floor at 

 depth of 30 inches. 



Beyond these under-floor features, and there were others, our 

 attention was diverted momentarily by apparent rodent burrowings, 

 varying in size but all filled with soft, ashy earth. At the northwest 

 the hole prepared for the pillar foundation had cut through the arc 

 of a partially razed earlier kiva, its floor at depth of 23 inches. Outside 

 that arc and on a well-marked surface 8 inches deeper, we encoun- 

 tered an intentional dump of constructional debris. Through it a ver- 

 tically cut bank, the marks of digging sticks still plain upon it, curved 

 back under the doubled bench as though prepared for a larger kiva 

 that was never built. 



All that remained of the Kiva A roof in 1921 was a pair of de- 

 cayed logs lying lengthwise upon the east vaults. To bridge the dis- 

 tance from one pillar to the other those logs must have been at least 

 30 feet long. Presumably they were paralleled by a second pair on 

 the west side ; presumably shorter pairs spanned the shorter distance 

 at each end of the long logs; presumably lesser timbers covered the 

 middle ceiling from east to west while others reached out from the 

 paired beams to the surrounding wall and there were firmly seated 

 in the upper stonework, as in Kiva L and others of its kind. 



I assume the 3-inch poles embedded side by side in the west-wall 

 masonry 9 feet 7 inches above the Kiva A floor were among such 

 lesser, bordering timbers and that their opposite ends rested upon 

 the paired beams. If those paired beams were each 12 inches in 

 diameter their supporting pillars must have stood at least 8 feet high 

 to allow for a 9^ foot ceiling. It sems incredible that 4 mud-and- 

 sandstone columns 8 feet high, even when strengthened by crossed 

 poles, could support the enormous weight of a roof 45 feet across 

 and a foot or more in thickness. But there is no alternative. We saw 

 only one possible ceiling prop, the butt of an 8-inch post near the 

 northeast corner of the east vault. 



This matter of weight and ceiling height introduces the question of 

 the relationship between Kiva A and its peripheral rooms, three on 



