Mesa Grande and Its World: An Analysis of Intrusive Pottery Types Recovered from Mesa Grande and Their Social Implications

Summary

Mesa Grande, one of the two largest Hohokam platform mound villages in the lower Salt River Valley, Arizona, contains an exceptionally large and diverse excavated sample of intrusive, diagnostic pottery types that have been cross-dated with tree-ring dates in other regions. Complexes of these intrusive types in a stratigraphically defined sequence at the site provide new insight into calendrical age of the mound and its associated compounds, allowing us to test recent suggestions that Mesa Grande was one of the first sites within the valley to be depopulated before the end of the Hohokam sequence. These data can also be used to address whether and when it was reoccupied. Finally, we use the intrusive ceramic dataset to investigate ideological and exchange connections among Mesa Grande and its Hohokam and regional neighbors, providing a basis for reconstructing aspects of the changing social order in the late prehistory of the southern Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Walls, Mounds, and Pots: Examining the Classic Period Hohokam

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17329