Reprinted from Proceedings op the Twenty-third International Congress op 
Americanists, September, 1928 
PUEBLO BONITO AND ITS ARCHITECTURAL 
DEVELOPMENT 
By Neil M. Judd 
P UEBLO BONITO is a prehistoric Indian village situated in Chaco Canyon, 
northwestern New Mexico. The National Geographic Society pursued an¬ 
nual investigations in Pueblo Bonito from 1921 to 1927 with the result 
that the ancient settlement has been laid bare and much of its history recovered. 
From its archaeological record, we judge the village to have been abandoned ap¬ 
proximately one thousand years ago. Its builders and former inhabitants have 
not yet been identified with any living Pueblo people. 
We think of Pueblo Bonito as a village, and so it is—a whole village within 
a single building, semicircular in plan, and covering more than three acres of 
ground. The straight south side of this communal structure measures 518 feet in 
length; in its convex north wall, portions of fourth-story rooms still stand. We 
may infer that, in its heyday, Pueblo Bonito included approximately eight hun¬ 
dred rooms and sheltered a population of between twelve and fifteen hundred. 
These were Indian farmers; they cultivated maize, beans, and squash in neigh¬ 
boring fields, watered chiefly by midsummer floods. The Bonitians had no 
beasts of burden, no domestic animals other than turkeys and dogs, and no ob¬ 
jects of metal except small copper bells introduced through commerce from 
Mexico. 
Omitting from our present theme all consideration of their remarkable cul¬ 
tural achievements, we may note that the occupants of Pueblo Bonito included 
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