The round underground room, a bit over 45 feet in diameter at the floor, is a great kiva which served as a religious center. Its roof, supported by four rubble-filled masonry columns, was 9 feet 7 inches above the floor. Thirty-four niches around the wall above the upper bench may once have held offerings of jewelry and other valued materials, but were open and empty at the time of excavation. The chamber was entered at the north end by a series of stone steps. You may enter and examine in detail a great kiva across the canyon at Casa Rinconada.
Another great kiva in the west court, and the division of the plaza, suggests to some students that the people were divided into two groups, each group responsible for certain ceremonies at different times of the year—summer people and winter people—as is true of many of the Rio Grande pueblos today.
National Geographic painting by Peter V. Bianchi, February 1964
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The ordinary kivas let down into this raised terrace served smaller groups than the great kiva. In today’s Pueblo villages kivas are used as meeting places by both male and female members of curing societies, as workshops for making ritual equipment, for dance rehearsal, and as sleeping places for boys while they are receiving religious instruction.
Kivas were more numerous than great kivas—37 have been identified in Pueblo Bonito—though not all were usable at one time. The kiva on the left was razed. All the timbers were removed and the open pit was used as a refuse dump by people in nearby rooms.
An architectural trait peculiar to Chacoan kivas is the low bench with from four to ten pilasters made of juniper logs buried in the wall and extending horizontally onto the bench. The pilasters supported the butts of log stringers which encircled the kiva. The stringers held the weight of another, but smaller, circle of stringers, and that circle still another, until 12 to 14 layers of poles in ever-decreasing circles made a dome-like ceiling of cribbing. A nearly intact roof in a nearby kiva was found to have used 350 timbers in its construction.
Close to the wall the ceiling was only about three feet above the floor, but at the center of the room there was an eight to ten foot clearance. The space between the outside of the roof-dome and the wall of the kiva was filled with earth and rubble to level off a flat court even with the level you are standing on. When these kivas were all in use their presence was indicated only by ladders protruding from rectangular openings which served both as entryways and smoke holes.
