Clue #1 – The Great Kiva Mystery

Chaco Canyon’s Pueblo Bonito area holds much more than rooms for sleeping. Pueblo Bonito holds 3 great kivas and 30 small kivas – all meeting rooms built of stone and that are semi-under ground. Nearby, with in easy walking distance of Pueblo Bonito is a giant round structure now called Casa Rinconada.  Because there are more than 33 kivas in and around Pueblo Bonito that could hold from a few dozen to hundreds of people, this large number of ceremonial structures (and absence of kitchens in the main building) suggests that Pueblo Bonito was not a year round city but was instead an important ceremonial center.

This huge ceremonial center could have been the focus of seasonal festivals an religious events, meetings and trade activities, with people from all over the Anasazi world and possible from across the Southwest attending. For the religious events, the people would have traveled as pilgrims to reach their holy churches or temples – the kivas. So perhaps while not a city, Pueblo Bonito served as a retreat center, providing food and lodging to guests who had walked on foot for days to reach this special canyon and its sacred structures and events.

When they arrived, they would have been fed, housed, and welcomed to attend different ceremonies in the great kivas, perhaps clan meetings in the smaller kivas, and may have traded goods with traders who came up from deep in Mexico, or across from the coasts of California. If their focus was to come to participate in the meetings, ceremonies and events of their culture, then this center would have drawn many thousands of people at different times of the year, who may have stayed for a few days or weeks, an then returned to their own villages renewed and inspired to ‘Keep the Ways’.