sub-floor vent
The trench in the floor, once covered with slabs of stone, was an air duct. Rising heat from the fire in the round pit pulled fresh air through the duct and down a vertical shaft just outside the kiva wall to provide ventilation.
The smaller kiva on your right, as you proceed along the trail, is unusual in having four tall masonry pilasters. Rather than a cribbed roof, it probably had a flat roof of horizontal timbers to give it an even seven-foot clearance over the entire space.
12
These ground floor rooms were used for storage and were reached from the living rooms above them by means of ladders through open hatchways in the ceiling.
Doorways were closed by leaning large, flat slabs of ground sandstone against sloping collars of masonry in the jambs, or by suspending matting from small sticks in the lintel.
13
The fire-reddened walls in this room resulted from a fire that destroyed the ceiling. The unburned area near the floor shows that the fire occurred after abandonment of the rooms. The earthen floors of the rooms above had leaked through and piled up against these walls. Tree-ring dates from charred beams fallen to the floor indicate construction at about A.D. 1100—one of the last additions to be built. The room had been left empty except for three scrapers made from deer bone. Each was beautifully inlaid with turquoise, jet and shell.
Note the diagonal doorway in the southeast corner of the room above.