There are three circular rooms in Sun Temple which from their form may
be identified as ceremonial in function, technically called kivas. Two
of these, free from other rooms, are situated in the plaza that
occupies the central part of the main building, and one is embedded in
rooms of the so-called "annex." Adjoining the last mentioned, also
surrounded by rooms, is a fourth circular chamber which is not a kiva.
This room, found to be almost completely filled with spalls or broken
stones, perhaps originally served as an elevated tower or lookout.
The kiva that is situated in the west section of Sun Temple has a
ventilator stack attached to the south side, recalling the typical
ventilator of a Mesa Verde cliff kiva, and there are indications of
the same structure in the two circular chambers in the court. These
kivas, however, have no banquettes or pilasters to support a vaulted
roof, and no fragments of roof beams were found in the excavations
made at Sun Temple. East of Sun Temple, where formerly there was only
a mound of stone and earth, there were found the remains of a low
circular structure of undetermined use.
Most of the peripheral rooms of Sun Temple open into adjoining rooms,
a few into the central court, but none has external openings. Some of
the rooms are without lateral entrances, as if it were intended to
enter them through a hatch in the roof.
Not only pits indicative of the stone tools by which the stones
forming the masonry of Sun Temple were dressed appear on all the rocks
used in its construction, but likewise many bear incised symbols.
Several of these still remain in the walls of the building; others
have been set in cement near the outer wall of the eastern kiva. It is
interesting to record that some of the stones of which the walls were
constructed were probably quarried on the mesa top not far from the
building, but as the surface of the plateau is now forested, the
quarries themselves are hidden in accumulated soil and are difficult
to discover.