It is probable that the area immediately adjacent to the ruin, and now
covered by mounds, carried buildings of the same time with the main
structure and was occupied contemporaneously with it or nearly so. This
area, well marked on the map, measures about 400 feet north and south,
and 240 feet east and west. It is not rectangular, although the eastern
and western sides, now marked by long ridges, are roughly parallel. The
northeastern corner does not conform to a rectangular plan, and the
southern side is not more than half closed by the low ridge which
extends partly across it. This area is doubtless the one measured in
1776, by Padre Font, whose description, was copied by later writers, and
whose measurements were applied by Humboldt and others to the ruin
itself. Font gave his measurements as those of a circumscribing wall,
and his inference has been adopted by many, in fact most, later writers.
A circumscribing wall is an anomalous feature, in the experience of the
writer, and a close inspection of the general map will show that Font's
inference is hardly justified by the condition of the remains today. It
seems more likely that the area in question was covered by groups of
buildings and rows of rooms, connected by open courts, and forming an
outline sometimes regular for a considerable distance, but more often
irregular, after the manner of pueblo structures today. The long north
and south ridge which forms the southeastern corner of the area, with
other ridges extending westward, is quite wide on top, wide enough to
accommodate a single row of rooms of the same width as those of the
ruin, and it is hardly reasonable to suppose that a wall would be built
10 or 12 feet wide when one of 4 feet would serve every purpose to which
it could possibly be put. Furthermore, the supposition of an inclosing
wall does not leave any reasonable explanation of the transverse ridges
above mentioned, nor of the long ridge which runs southward from the
southeastern corner of the ruin.