The Pueblo Bonito remnants in New Mexico tells a beautiful story of a thriving community and it’s effect on countless other areas. Dating from 830 to 1250 CE, Pueblo Bonito was the largest “great house,” so large that it had to be built in stages between the tenth and mid-thirteenth centuries, with 800 rooms and about four stories. It was built in a “D” shape and there were thirty-two kivas, or partially submerged pit houses, along the crescent side of the structure. Inside, people performed religious ceremonies and youth were instructed on their social and labor responsibilities. The roof was formed out of interlocking pine logs in a dome shaped with a hole at the pinnacle for men to climb down through on an extended ladder. Directly under the hole was what was called the “navel of the earth” where the early Pueblo anthology claimed was the entrance from which the original, “first time” Pueblo ancestors entered. The structure had roadways that stemmed off to 70 other communities and served as a “home base.” The pathways never strayed from a direct path despite obstacles such as hills that could be avoided or gone around. This indicates that they served more of a purpose than just travel functionality, such as ritualistic processions.

This photo of the Ancient Ruins in the Canon De Chelley arizona, taken in 1873 by Timothy O’Sullivan, shows the area in an exaggerated but beautiful. Above the gaping, dark hole at the mid-left side of the image are the sedimentary lines shown in an exaggerated way that would not be as obvious from a different angle or lense. The emphasis on the lines also distracts from the ruins that the eye is less likely to wander to. In most landscape images there is a specific light source shown, however there is not in this image. The light vs. dark motif is still used in other ways though.

The first image depicts the ruins–or the leftovers–of the structure as the subject of the picture, while the second image distracts from it. This is most likely due to the fact that the purpose of the focus of the former image was solely to document the artistry, while the latter image was used as an exploration to find war-campout sites.