A detailed perspective of Ancestral Puebloan building technique called "chinking" .  Chinking is the use of small stones fitted into the mortar between larger stones to fill gaps and add structural stability to the walls.  The Ancestral Puebloans used a variety of techniques to build their cliff dwellings, including shaping sandstone blocks with harder stones, mixing mortar from local soil, water, and ash, and using chinking stones.  Hovenweep National Monument, Utah.