A Curious Presence: Examining Salado Polychrome Production and Provenance in the Phoenix Basin of Arizona through a Multi-method Approach

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Between ca. 1300 and 1450 CE, Salado polychrome (Roosevelt red ware) pottery production and use spread rapidly, then persisted across the US Southwest, intersecting diverse cultural and regional traditions, and creating a material pattern termed the “Salado phenomenon.” In Arizona’s Phoenix basin during the Hohokam late Classic period, Salado polychromes appear curiously, with high ubiquity but low frequency, and unaccompanied by many of the material signatures that underpin explanatory models for their production developed in adjacent regions. To better understand the distinct material and social relations that structured how Phoenix basin residents obtained Salado ceramics, a study of Salado polychrome production and provenance was undertaken, examining museum ceramic collections from nine sites. A suite of complementary chemical and mineralogical characterization methods, including neutron activation analysis (n = 278), electron probe microanalysis (n = 60), and ceramic petrography allows the assessment of compositional and technological variability, the number and nature of compositional groups, their possible relationship to source locations, and the degree to which composition cross-cuts ware and type categories. Beyond elucidating the production and distribution of these ceramics, this research aids in understanding the social and practical meanings of engagement with Salado practices and materials in the Phoenix-basin Hohokam context.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37765.0