Prehistoric Painted Pottery of Southeastern Arizona

Robert A. Heckman; Barbara K. Montgomery; Stephanie M. Whittlesey

Prehistoric Painted Pottery of Southeastern Arizona

Author(s): Robert A. Heckman; Barbara K. Montgomery; Stephanie M. Whittlesey

Year: 2000

Summary

Statistical Research, Inc., was contracted in 1996 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to perform a variety of tasks pertinent to collections of prehistoric ceramics from archaeological work conducted on Fort Huachuca Military Reservation located in southeastern Arizona. The bulk of the contract consisted of two tasks—teaching a class on the ceramics and prehistory of southeastern Arizona and preparing a guide to prehistoric pottery found at sites in this region of the American Southwest. The two-week-long class was taught at Fort Huachuca in June of 1998 to a group of 24 avocationalist archaeologists who volunteer their time at the Garden Canyon site (AZ EE:11:13 [ASM]), a prehistoric village occupied during the pre-Classic and Classic periods, located on Fort Huachuca. These volunteers are members of the Cochise Chapter of the Arizona Archaeological Society and worked under the supervision of Post Archaeologist John Murray. The main objective of the class and the pottery guide was to familiarize the volunteers with the pottery from Garden Canyon and other sites in southeastern Arizona. Although the guide was written specifically for this group of volunteers, we hope that other avocationalists and professional archaeologists also will find it useful.

The guide focuses on southeastern Arizona and the period between A.D. 650 and 1450, when painted pottery was made. We limit our discussions to painted pottery because it encodes diverse social, ideological, functional, and temporal information, and because sorting out ambiguities in existing taxonomic systems for unpainted pottery in southeastern Arizona is a task well beyond the scope of this project. The painted pottery included in this guide represents ceramics commonly found at sites in southeastern Arizona, with a special focus on the Garden Canyon site. To set the stage, we provide a history of archaeological research in southeastern Arizona, an overview of its culture history between A.D. 650 and 1450, and some comments on the history and use of pottery classification in the Southwest. Treatment of ceramics varies according to frequency and depth of archaeological understanding. The better-known and least-ambiguous ceramics, such as Hohokam Buff Ware, are described only briefly. Considerable attention is paid to the more ambiguous, poorly described ceramics—Babocomari, Dragoon, San Simon, and Trincheras—using the framework of ceramic tradition as a heuristic device.

Ceramics are not only aesthetically pleasing but are the backbone of archaeological interpretation in the Southwest, providing information on economics, social organization, settlement systems, religion, and ideology. This guide is designed to help avocationalists and professional archaeologists use ceramics to unlock these doors to the prehistoric past.

Cite this Record

Prehistoric Painted Pottery of Southeastern Arizona. Robert A. Heckman, Barbara K. Montgomery, Stephanie M. Whittlesey. Technical Series ,77. Tucson, AZ: SRI Press. 2000 ( tDAR id: 425939) ; doi:10.48512/XCV8425939