NO. I ARCHITECTURE OF PUEBLO BONITO JUDD 227 



carve a deeper path for a short distance ; they might destroy all or 

 part of the paths carved by earlier floods. Turning first one way 

 and then another, such divergent courses were the "discontinuous 

 channels" of Bryan's Chaco Canyon observations. 



FLOODWATERS 



He repeatedly calls attention to features that distinguish these 

 lesser waterways. They were a characteristic of the second cycle of 

 alluviation, spreading out disjointedly while the main valley fill was 

 building up. They tend to be round-bottomed wherever confined 

 laterally, with a crescentic fill of sand, clay, and clayey gravel ; they 

 occur most frequently in midvalley but often reach out on either 

 side and one actually underlies the south rooms of Pueblo Bonito. 

 This latter may have been directed in its course by some undisclosed 

 upcanyon obstacle for it was remarkably persistent. We came upon 

 it quite unexpectedly during the digging of our extended East and 

 West Mound trenches (figs. 7, 24, c). 



In both exposures the one-time floodway is floored with coarse 

 sand in which clay streaks, pellets, and gravel lenses occur. But 

 these water-borne deposits are overlain by quantities of household 

 sweeping and the discards of constructional activities — sandstone 

 spalls and chunks of dried adobe mortar bearing the imprints of 

 building materials. The source of all this wastage was Pueblo Bonito 

 itself. Some of it had been dumped there early, as witness the len- 

 ticular bed of household sweepings 10 feet below the surface at Sta- 

 tion 180, West Mound trench (fig. 7), and the metate fragment at 

 comparable depth above Station 164 in the second trench, 250 feet 

 distant (fig. 24, c). Witness, also, the two deep-lying hearths built 

 on the dry bed of the channel to meet the momentary need of local 

 picnickers or traders from far countries. 



Obviously here was a former channel that had held transient water 

 from time to time and that had become a common dump-ground for 

 the village people living nearby. As village rubbish mounted, the 

 floodwaters were diverted and new courses eroded. I do not pre- 

 tend to experience in such matters, but later stream channels cer- 

 tainly are indicated by the higher, more or less crescentic layers of 

 jointed clay and silt-streaked sand seen in the East trench between 

 Stations 55 and 80. 



Our Middle Trench (fig. 24, c), an exploratory venture between the 

 East and West mounds, was neither long enough nor deep enough 

 to bare the full history of this intermediate section. The laminated 



