A Preliminary Evaluation of the Verde Confederacy Model: Testing Expectations of Pottery Exchange in the Central Arizona Highlands

Summary

Regional demographic movements during the mid 13th-14th centuries signaled corresponding changes to social and economic networks throughout the American Southwest. In the high mesa country of central Arizona large, masonry pueblos were constructed around AD 1250–1300 overlooking the vertical walls of Perry Mesa, in the Bloody Basin, and along the middle Verde River valley. As these settlement clusters coalesced, a 45 km expanse of empty land opened between the upland pueblos and the densely packed Hohokam population centers in the Phoenix Basin. A current theory termed the Verde Confederacy Model contends that this gap in settlement reflected mounting social tensions between populations in the irrigated river valleys of the Phoenix Basin and people living in the rugged high country to the north (Wilcox et al., 2001). The model posits that defensive alliances formed between northern settlements to deter attacks from Hohokam invaders. A well-documented web of line-of-sight relationships across the Verde Confederacy territory enabled settlements to rapidly communicate for defensive purposes and to support social and economic networks among villages in the confederacy (Wilcox, 2005; Wilcox et al., 2001). This study evaluates two expectations of the Verde Confederacy model using ceramic provenance and exchange data from Perry Mesa plainware pottery assemblages.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Legacies on the Landscape

Keywords

Temporal Coverage

Calendar Date: 1200 to 1450

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contributor(s): Arizona State University, Department of Anthropology

Landowner(s): Bureau of Land Management

File Information