Pueblo Bonito is the biggest and most famous Great House in Chaco Canyon with hundreds of interconnected rooms, over thirty kivas and a huge central plaza.
Pueblo Bonito is amazing, the biggest of all of the Chacoan Great Houses. It is the usual D shape and, though it has a slightly smaller footprint than Chetro Ketl, it is larger by virtue of the fact that the buildings rise progressively to four storeys on the outer edge of pueblo, along the boundary wall. The number of storeys decreases towards the central plaza around which they are single-storeyed.
It was occupied between around 850 and the 1250s and has over 350 ground floor rooms, 32 small kivas and three great kivas.
We made our way up to the back of the Great House, the curved northern area closest to the cliffs. The extent of Pueblo Bonito can be seen well from here, though the going is tricky in parts due to the many rock falls leaving huge boulders scattered around.
The many kivas are easily recognisable by their circular shape; they are often at least partially subterranean and entered via a hole in the flat roof with a ladder.
The large number of kivas has led to speculation that Pueblo Bonito was a significant ceremonial site where many ancient Puebloans from villages near and far would have gathered for important events.
One of the larger kivas we saw is, I think, Kiva Q, as designated on the Chaco Research Archive website.1 It has a bench all the way around the inner wall but no sign of pilasters. There is a central walled firepit and a sub-floor vault on each side of the firepit. There is also an antechamber, something we saw in kivas only at Chaco.
A north-south wall divides the central plaza in two roughly equal parts. It was built some time between 1050 and 1070 (site information board info) and has a number of narrow rooms along its length.
The kivas are quite varied, though how much of this is due to obliteration of features over time I don't know. Some have benches with or without pilasters, others don't. There are firepits, floor vaults, antechambers or none of these. I would assume the absence of firepits is purely due to the ravages of time and perhaps salvaging stone for other purposes. A firepit seems to be an essential feature of a kiva through the ages.
Kiva A1 is a Great Kiva with numerous features excavated. It is the largest kiva at Pueblo Bonito with a diameter of approximately 15.8m.1 A bench lines the interior and is on either two or three levels. There is also a set of steps in the wall to an antechamber and numerous wall niches. Within the kiva is a large firepit and a number of floor vaults.
We left Pueblo Bonito through a complex of rooms that has been very well restored. All are interlinked, there are no corridors, though our guide thought that perhaps the ground floor rooms were used for moving around the complex with people living on upper floors.
The doorways are tiny and very low. All apertures have there upper surface supported by timber poles.
Our guide led us to a tiny room with a very low intact ceiling using reed or rush matting.
Leaving Pueblo Bonito we continued the loop of the canyon on the south side, stopping to view Casa Rinconada, an isolated Great House.
Our guide also pointed out a set of steps carved high in the mesa which were used by the Chacoans to exit the canyon. This particular stairway connected Tsin Kletsin on South Mesa to Chetro Ketl in the canyon, Pueblo Alto to the north and many distant communities.
There was a sophisticated system of roads connecting the settlements within the canyon as well as further outlying settlements. Roads were engineered to be straight and up to 30 feet wide. Where the way was blocked by high ground a ramp or staircase was constructed to continue the straight road.