no SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 'J2 



would be premature. Dwellings were razed and replaced by other 

 structures as Pueblo Bonito grew in size and population. 



Those walls which appear to have formed the nucleus of the village 

 are crude and irregular ; the rooms they inclose are relatively small 

 and low of ceiling. In contrast to these, walls of the second type 

 exhibit an infinite amount of patience and attention to detail. They 

 consist of rather large uniform blocks of friable sandstone, dressed 

 on the face only, laid in adobe mud and chinked with innumerable 

 small, thin chips. Equally marked in its variation from that in the 

 oldest houses is the masonry of the third type mentioned. In this, 

 uniformly thin tablets of laminate sandstone were utilized with a 

 minimum of adobe and little or no chinking. Larger blocks were 

 frequently laid in bands both for the decorative efifect produced and 

 as bonds to hold the masonry veneer to the earthy core of the wall. 

 Beneath the floors of a large number of the rooms excavated during 

 1 92 1 were found the razed walls of older structures in which a dilifer- 

 ent style of construction prevailed. 



These principal variations in masonry may represent merely local 

 developments — the will of ascendant influences in Pueblo Bonito — but 

 it seems more reasonable to believe that each came in upon a wave 

 of immigration from other regions. Among the collections made 

 during the summer are specimens of pottery characteristic of the Alesa 

 Verde cliff-dwellings in Colorado, of the prehistoric ruins in the 

 Kayenta and Gila River districts of Arizona and of the Rio San 

 Francisco, New Mexico. The very number of these objects would 

 indicate not that they had been introduced through intertribal com- 

 merce but rather that their makers had come to dwell at Pueblo Bonito, 

 bringing with them their own distinctive arts and industries. On the 

 other hand, it is manifest that the prehistoric Bonitians maintained 

 an active trade with other primitive folk at a great distance from their 

 terraced village in Chaco Canyon. The quantity of Pacific coast 

 shell — used for beads, pendants and other ornaments — copper bells 

 from central Mexico and especially skeletons of the great macaw 

 {^Ara iiiacao) , furnish abundant proof that adventurers from Pueblo 

 Bonito or friendly traders from distant valleys braved the rigors of 

 open desert travel long before the Spanish conquistadores introduced 

 the horse and other beasts of burden. 



The circular kivas in Pueblo Bonito, as elsewhere, were both 

 council chambers where clan representatives met for consultation and 

 religious sanctuaries in which secret ceremonies were enacted and prep- 

 arations made for public rituals to be held in the open courts of the 



