Pueblo Bonito, part III
Chaco Canyon, San Juan Basin, New Mexico

With so many images of Pueblo Bonito, it became necessary to "divee-up"
the collection in "web-manageable" chunks. Hence this artificial division:
part 0 part I part II part III part VI

23. 24.
wandering back north into the beginning of the still-high-standing walls area,
this walls-windows-corner sight provides a wealth of visual history about the
exquisite abilities of the different stone masons who sculpted these rooms

25.
to these people, there was something very significant
about windows diagonally laid through corners of rooms
as this characteristic was visible in abundance and variation

27. 26.

these two doorways share the same wall corner between them (in keeping with the convention of listing images in the order made, 26 was taken first, but to understand the relationship of these to each other, it's necessary to present them in "reverse order") -- 27 looks west into the room marked as 16 in the trail map, while 26 looks north to the spot where 21-22 was viewed. Check out the absolutely exquisite attention to detail evident in the "Type IV" masonry visible here.

-- If they didn't "write things down", then how did they keep track of the multitude of issues such sophisticated "construction-over-time-and-space" -- as measured by today's standards -- would necessarily entail? -- what methods did they employ to create such precision? The evidence of an extremely sophisticated understanding and clear appreciation of such architectural design considerations as the importance of south-facing and terraced floor levels to maximize solar gain, and the essential necessity of pre-planning the design of buildings whose history of construction spanned the lifetimes of three to eight generations (and-more) of its inhabitants, bespeaks a community of people who were highly advanced in many of the areas industrial culture prides itself on in the present day, and yet . . . it was saddening to this writer that this history and visible "record of accomplishment" was never explicated at ALL in any history books encountered in school (high school 1969-73, or college 1973-74,75-77,83-85). Some might say `the archeologists are virtually the last one's to get what they've "unearthed" into the history books', while others are of the mind that `"to the victors go the spoils" and, that the europeans who overwhelmed the original inhabitants of Turtle Island simply chose to write the stories they deemed "appropriate" -- and omit those that were not -- which are the one's that predominate today. It simply is a tragic loss, in this specific instance, as the stories to tell regarding what these people were about, would be magnificent stories indeed.

28. 29.
moving outside in front of the southeast corner, looking northeast
in 28, and directly north in 29 at what 28 centers on.

30.
taken the next morning, October 31st, this day saw the gathering of high clouds,
the heralds of the approaching storm which arrived in full regalia
the following day. the left side of this image is that framed in 29.

31.
panoramic view standing at the center of the south "front" of Pueblo Bonita
(bias in this cropped image is to the left--see 33 below)

32.
panoramic view composed of the center-north & right-east portion of the 3 views below

33 34 35
as with the other "panoramas", 31 and 32 were concocted/composed directly on the
scanner plate (used to create on-line copies of all the images included herein). the
technique employed was to tape the images together on their backsides after trying
to "line-up" the places where each edge matched the next (obviously there is a lot
left to be desired here--one ultimate solution would be to spring for a fisheye lens
and create single, wide-angle shots in the first place). another shortcoming of the
current process is is the size of the scanner bed (hp scanjet IIcx): the length of the
bed is 14 inches--but three images side-by-side add up to more than that. hence
this long-winded explanation for cropping the left-half of 33 in 31. another issue
in all of this is the constraint of having the full-sized versions of these images not
exceed 768 pixels high or 1024 pixels wide. thus the panorama shots dwindle in
height as their length increases. but, as this was being written, the idea presented
itself that there still needs to be a panorama image of 33-35 that is complete. . . .
step into part IV to see the thumbnail of this as the first image in the final group.

With so many images of Pueblo Bonito, it became necessary to "divee-up"
the collection in "web-manageable" chunks. Hence this artificial division:

part 0 part I part II part III part VI

Chetro Ketl Pueblo del Arroyo Casa Chiquita Kin Kletso Casa Rinconada

WUPATKI MESA VERDE AZTEC CHACO CANYON

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