Pueblo Bonito by Jill E. Neitzel

Author:Jill E. Neitzel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Smithsonian
Published: 2018-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

Room 53, immediately north of Room 32 (Fig. 8.1), can be entered from the north, south, and west. Room 53 was partially excavated by Moorehead, who entered the room by tearing down the north and east walls. Cleaning up after Moorehead, Pepper found two pitchers, a small bowl, and a cylinder jar fragment against the east wall and a child’s cranium with a deposit of more than 4,000 turquoise beads and 30 shell beads and pendants nearby. A skeleton missing only the cranium (probably one of those collected by Moorehead) was found at the south end of the room. Pieces of feather cloth and portions of cradle boards, ceremonial and gaming sticks, vessel fragments, and turquoise beads were unearthed from the general debris (Pepper 1920:210–213). Human bone from this room, at the American Museum of Natural History, consists of tibiae from at least four adults and scapulae from six individuals, representing at least one adolescent male, a middle-aged male, and an older female. The child’s cranium and the bones of a newborn infant are also present.

Room 56 is located west of Room 53, which provides its only entry. In Room 56 Moorehead (1906:34) found the “splendidly preserved skeleton of a young woman wrapped in a large feather robe.” He noted that some pottery accompanied the burial. Pepper (1920:216–218), cleaning up after Moorehead, commented that there were two subfloor graves as well as bones scattered throughout the dirt piled in the room’s northeastern and northwestern sections. One of the graves had a bottom formed by sticks and sides made of boards. It was also covered by boards or matting. Fragments of both were found in Room 53, and some of the human bone from this room is cataloged as “thrown from Room 56.” The catalog for the Charles S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology at the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where Moorehead was curator, lists a reed mat and feather robe that covered a burial found in Pueblo Bonito’s northwest corner. This individual, a male about 40 to 44 years of age, is probably one of the individuals from Room 56, possibly Moorehead’s splendid young woman.

Room 61, just north of Room 53, may also have housed burials. The American Museum of Natural History catalog lists material from the room north of Rooms 63 and 53, probably Room 61, as having been purchased from O. H. Buck, whom Pepper hired for unspecified duties (McNitt 1966:141). Among the materials attributed to Room 61 are Haliotis shell pendants, shell beads, a turquoise bead fragment, and shell bracelets found with an adult male skull. Pepper (1920:222–223) found fragments of a burned human skull in the room’s southeast corner as well as a few unburned bones. He did not mention prior disturbance except that the west wall had been demolished.

Pepper’s (1909:247; 1920:376) overall conclusion was that Pueblo Bonito’s northern rooms were used for burials and to store ceremonial materials. The presence of valuable ornaments and ceremonial paraphernalia with nearly all of the bodies suggested to

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