The Aztec Ruins NM is first of all, not Aztec at all. This site was constructed and occupied by the ancestral Puebloan people. The ruins were "mistakenly" named Aztec in the mid-1800s and the name stuck. The site was excavated in the early 1900s and became a national park site in 1923. The great Kiva, a place of spirituality, gathering and ceremony for the Puebloan people, was reconstructed by the NPS in the 1930s. One of the most fascinating things about this site is that the wood ceilings are still intact in some of the rooms and you actually get to walk through these rooms and see the ceilings. While we were there, an archaeologist was working on cataloging all the inscriptions, ancient graffiti, written on the wood beams that make up the ceiling of the rooms. He was finding hundreds of inscriptions from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Aztec Ruins is a smaller site that not a lot of people visit but it is well worth the trip. It gives the visitor an opportunity to get up close in a way that is not offered in most other ancestral sites.
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| Green stripes were an added decoration to this wall. |
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| Original 900 year old wood ceilings. |
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| Reconstructed Great Kiva |
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| T-shaped doorway. |
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| Looking through the connected doorways. Photo taken during the full moon night tour. |
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