VIII. THE SOUTH REFUSE MOUNDS 



Two conspicuous trash piles lie in front of Pueblo Bonito (pi, 3), 

 and both are enclosed by contemporary masonry. Trash piles have a 

 peculiar fascination for an archeologist because, to a degree, they 

 reflect the lives and industries of the people responsible for their 

 being. Since materials at the bottom would have been discarded first, 

 a vertical section through such a trash pile should provide a partial 

 understanding, albeit limited to the least perishable materials, of the 

 local culture during the period of accumulation. Hence our initial 

 archeological undertaking at Pueblo Bonito was a stratigraphic ex- 

 amination of the West Refuse Mound, larger of the two. 



I was not aware at the time that such an examination had already 

 been accomplished. It was mid-May 1921 when I received, through 

 courtesy of Dr. Clark Wissler of the American Museum of Natural 

 History, partial page proof of Pepper's Hyde Expedition notes, 1896- 

 1899, and still later before I saw the results of Nelson's 1916 testing 

 of the two Pueblo Bonito mounds (in Pepper, 1920, pp. 383-390). 

 Nelson's findings are both confirmed and augmented by ours, as 

 will be seen. 



STRATIGRAPHY 



A few days after we made camp I selected a previously undis- 

 turbed site near the crest of the West Mound, cleared away the up- 

 permost 12-14 inches because it was loose and trampled, and dug 

 a trench to clear sand at a depth of 20 feet (pi. 6, left) . Our sampling 

 was limited to a 3- foot square at the end of that trench, and the 

 successive layers, irrespective of thickness, were determined by the 

 materials between. Lenses of ash, vegetal matter, and blown sand 

 provided clear-cut separations. We were seeking fragments of 

 pottery, then as now a handy gage of cultural progress, but were not 

 prepared to find early and late types — sherds typologically different 

 and distinct — intermixed throughout the full 20 feet. Nor were we 

 prepared to find, throughout, pieces of sandstone and chunks of 

 discarded mud mortar in quantities dwarfing village debris. The West 

 Refuse Mound was not a normal trash pile. 



In that first attempt at stratigraphy we recovered 2,118 potsherds 

 from 23 separate strata (U.S.N.M. No. 334180), and early and late 



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