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link to westerndigs.org]
Buried under a thousand years’ worth of eroded stone and wind-blown sand, Blue J has intrigued experts with what little it has revealed: the outlines of nearly 60 households, situated around a series of open plazas, the masonry and building styles dating their construction to the 11th century.
Almost entirely unexcavated, the settlement sits just 70 kilometers south of Chaco Canyon — the nexus of Ancestral Pueblo culture — and was built during the heyday of Chaco’s widest influence.
And yet Blue J has been notable so far for what it appeared to lack: the monumental, ceremonial architecture that would signal its role as a Chacoan community.
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Because the stonework of the archaeological ruins retains heat longer than surrounding soils, we can use the technology to reveal ‘hot’ areas where stone rubble was buried as well as ‘cool’ areas showing cavities below the surface,” Casana said in a statement.
“The drone identified at least one circular, buried anomaly that is almost exactly the right size for a great kiva,” Kantner said. ”It is decidedly not visible in any way on the surface.”
This feature may have the biggest implications of any other discovery made by the drone, he said, since the presence of a distinctly Chacoan religious structure would suggest that Blue J was, in fact, within Chaco Canyon’s cultural sphere of influence.