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| Tuesday, 04 May 1999 | ||
The Spread of Corrugation Technology in the American Southwest
Christopher Pierce
Documenting the spread of corrugation technology on the basis of published information is a formidable undertaking. Given that one must rely, for the most part, on pottery type data from diverse regions of the Southwest, two hurdles present themselves. The first has to do with dating. Ideally, one reconstructs the spread of corrugation based on independent, absolute dates of the earliest appearance of a particular corrugation type, or technique, in different areas of the Southwest. However, many areas of the Southwest lack adequately dated pottery assemblages that span the entire sequence of changes. Consequently, the beginning and ending dates for many pottery types are based on cross dating with other regions. While often useful for general chronological purposes, cross dating can introduce problems when one is trying to determine if a particular kind of pottery is slightly earlier or later in one region than another. The second hurdle involves the use of numerous different typological schemes across the Southwest. Pottery type names and descriptions can vary considerable from one region to another making it difficult, in some cases, to be sure that one is dealing with the same technology. Utility wares have not generally been accorded the kind of intense scrutiny often given to painted pottery in the Southwest. This lack of attention means that many dating and typological discrepancies and subtleties have gone unexamined or undocumented. As a result of these issues, the reconstruction of the spread of corrugation across the Southwest I present here should be considered tentative, and subject to alteration as new data come to light and more thorough evaluations of existing data are conducted.
The earliest evidence of any type of corrugation, or exposed coil technology in the American Southwest is during the middle to late seventh century AD in the southern Mogollon or Mimbres region of New Mexico (LeBlanc 1982; Wasley 1960). This pottery, referred to as Alma Neckbanded, is very similar to the earliest pottery with exposed coils in the Mesa Verde region and elsewhere in the northern Southwest. The unobliterated coils are relatively wide and non-overlapping, and they are restricted to the neck region of jars (Haury 1936; Hawley 1950). The main difference between Alma Neckbanded and the early neck banded pottery of the northern Southwest is that the Alma Neckbanded is a brown ware pottery made from iron-rich clay and fired in an oxidizing atmosphere. The northern neck-banded pottery, referred to as Kana'a or, in the Mesa Verde region, Moccasin Gray, is a gray ware fired in a reducing atmosphere.
The Alma Neckbanded technology, if not the pottery itself, spread north and west, appearing in the Quemado area of west-central New Mexico (Mills 1987; Wasley 1959) and the Forestdale Valley of east-central Arizona (Haury 1940a, 1940b) during the early part of the eighth century (Figure 1). In the Quemado area, both Alma brown neck banded and Kana'a gray neck banded pottery occur, but the Alma type appears earlier than the Kana'a type. The Kana'a style gray neck banding technology appears to have spread north across the Zuni and Puerco (of the west) Rivers, through the Hopi and Kayenta areas west of the Chuska Mountains, into the Mesa Verde and Gobernador regions to the north and east, and west into the Flagstaff, Grand Canyon and Virgin River areas (Figure 1). In each of these regions, with the possible exception of the Grand Canyon and Virgin River areas, this earliest form of corrugation appears to be reasonably well dated to the late eighth or early ninth centuries (Breternitz 1966; Breternitz et al. 1974; Colton and Hargrave 1937; Dittert et al. 1961; Eddy 1966; Hall 1944; Harlan 1962; Hays-Gilpin and van Hartesveldt 1999; Layhe 1984; Plog 1984). The presence of Mogollon-like brown wares in early ceramic assemblages from the Colorado Plateau (Wilson and Blinman 1994), and greater than expected population growth in some parts of the Plateau during the eighth century (Schlanger 1986) suggest that migrations of people north out of the Mogollon region may have played an important role in the rapid spread of Kana'a style neck banding. However, the evidence for migration is not yet conclusive (Wilson 1988a).
 Figure 1. Map showing a reconstruction of the spread of early neck banding in the American Southwest.
After a delay of 50 to 100 years, Kana'a style neck banding spread into the southern San Juan Basin on the east side of the Chuska Mountains, and then into the Rio Puerco (of the east), Jemez and middle Rio Grande valleys (Figure 1). Recently reported evidence from the southern Chuska Valley (Freuden 1996; Loebig 1996; Reed et al. 1996; Stirniman and Yost 1996) and Chaco Canyon (Toll and McKenna 1997) date the earliest appearance of neck-banded pottery to the late ninth century. Although the first neck-banding is not as well dated in the Puerco/Rio Grande area, Kana'a style pottery does post date AD 800, and probably appeared closer to the turn of the tenth century (Durand and Hurst 1991; Hurst 1991; McNutt 1969; C. Dean Wilson, personal communication). It took even longer for neck banding to reach the Taos and Gallina areas of northern New Mexico where the technology appears to post date AD 1000, and never became a significant part of the utility ware tradition (Hibben 1949; Mera 1938; Wilson 1995; Wilson and Lakatos 1997). The delayed appearance of neck-banding in the southern San Juan basin and Rio Grande areas suggests that these areas were isolated from the contacts, either migration or diffusion, that led to the initial spread of exposed coil technology into the northern Southwest. The delayed appearance of certain styles of painted pottery (e.g., Reed et al . 1996) supports the notion that these areas were isolated from interaction with other areas of the Southwest, rather than some other mechanism inhibiting the movement of utility ware technologies alone. This isolation broke down in the late ninth century when a drought and prolonged period of short growing seasons (Dean 1988; Petersen 1988) resulted in substantial population declines in the Mesa Verde region and elsewhere in the northern Southwest (Berry 1982; Nichols and Smiley 1984; Schlanger 1986; Wilshusen and Schlanger 1993; Wilshusen and Varien 1996). At the same time, population increased in the southern San Juan basin and Rio Grande areas, probably as a result of immigration from the areas to the north being partly or wholly abandoned (Baker and Durand 1991; Hayes 1981; Kearns 1997; McNutt 1969; Wilshusen 1995; Windes 1987). Consequently, it appears that a substantial southward migration out of the upper San Juan basin during the late eighth and early ninth centuries may account for the introduction of neck banding into the southern San Juan and Rio Grande areas.
Despite the variable introduction of Kana'a style neck banding into different parts of the Southwest, the development of narrow filleted and overlapping coils and some form of indentation appears to have occurred in several places at more or less the same time during the late ninth to mid tenth centuries. However, the dating of the individual innovations is extremely poor. One of the reasons for the poor dating is that the current typologies tend to lump all of these features into a single transitional utility ware type. By combining these features into single types with long temporal spans, it makes it extremely difficult to date the introduction of any one innovation as I did earlier in this chapter for the Mesa Verde region. The most common of these types include Medicine Gray west of the Chuska Mountains (Colton and Hargrave 1937; Colton 1955), Mancos Gray in the northern San Juan region (Breternitz et al. 1974), Tohatchi Banded in the southern San Juan basin area ( Wendorf et al. 1956; Windes 1977; Reed et al. 1996), and Three Circles Neck Corrugated in the eastern Mogollon region (Haury 1936; Hawley 1950). Based on current evidence, it appears that these innovations (narrow overlapped and filleted coils, and indenting) may have occurred first in the eastern Mogollon region, but this is by no means a secure conclusion.
The development of substantially overlapped and systematically indented pottery (indented corrugation), and the use of these techniques over the entire exterior vessel surface are more easily dated because this combination of attributes has tended to be distinguished by specific pottery types. The regular use of indented corrugation may have occurred first during the middle of the tenth century, in and around the Chaco Canyon and Chuska Valley areas of the southern San Juan basin. This dating is based on unusually high frequencies neck corrugation (overlapped and indented coils restricted to the neck portion of jars) in comparison to other areas of the northern Southwest, and a firm association of neck and full-body corrugation with Red Mesa Black-on-White, a painted pottery style manufactured during the tenth century at Chaco Canyon (McKenna and Toll 1984; Toll and McKenna 1997; Windes 1977).
The regular, and often exclusive, use of full-body indented corrugation on utility wares spread rapidly across most of the Colorado Plateau from the likely center of development in the southern San Juan basin (Figure 2). Full-body corrugation rapidly replaced neck banding between 1030 and 1060 AD from the Virgin River region on the west to the Rio Puerco (of the east) on the east, and from the Mesa Verde region in the north to the Rio Puerco (of the west) and San Jose River in the south (Breternitz 1966; Breternitz et al. 1974; Hays-Gilpin and van Hartesveldt 1995; Hurst 1991; Larson and Michaelson 1990; McKenna and Toll 1984; Plog and Hantman 1986; Reed et al. 1996; Toll and McKenna 1997). Indented corrugation on a variety of vessel forms also appears for the first time during the latter half of the eleventh century in the Fremont area of southern and western Utah and eastern Nevada without any clear neck banded antecedent (Dodd 1982; James 1986; Lohse 1981; Madson 1970, 1979, 1986; Steward 1936).
Indented corrugation was adopted slightly later, during the middle of the twelfth century, in the far southern Colorado Plateau, the eastern and western Mogollon regions, the Sinagua region, and the middle Rio Grande Valley, and later still, during the early thirteenth century, in the Taos area indicating a slower south and eastward spread of the technology (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Barter 1957; Brunson 1985; Crown 1990; Doyel 1978; McGimsey 1980; McNutt 1969; Mills 1987; Rinaldo and Bluhm 1956; Stark 1995a; Tuggle 1982; Wetherington 1968; Wilson 1995; Wilson and Lakatos 1997). In the Rio Grande, Mogollon, and southern Sinagua areas, full-body corrugation existed side-by-side and in combination with a wide variety of other kinds of utility ware technologies including neck banded, incised, punched, plain, and smudged vessels. In the western Mogollon/Sinagua region, the appearance of indented corrugation during the eleventh century marks the first use of corrugation techniques in this area (Stark 1995a). Although some corrugation occurs in Classic Period (post AD 1150) Hohokam settlements in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona, the distributions are spotty, and frequencies tend to be quite low in comparison to other kinds of utility wares (e.g., Jewett 1986; Wood and McAllister 1982).
Migration, trade, and large-scale socio-political integration or affiliation may have been involved in the rapid spread of full-body corrugation. Improved climatic conditions together with the adoption of new, intensified agricultural practices in the late tenth through the middle twelfth centuries, resulted in unprecedented population growth and territorial expansion by Puebloan agriculturalists in the American Southwest (Dean 1996; Dean et al. 1994; Dean et al. 1985; Gumerman and Gell-Mann 1994). This demographic surge is known as the Pueblo II expansion. The eleventh century demographic upturn also coincided with the possible development of the first large-scale economic, social, political and ideological integration in the Colorado Plateau area, commonly referred to as the "Chacoan regional system" (Crown and Judge 1991; LeBlanc 1989; Lekson et al. 1988). Although degree of integration in the Chacoan regional system may be overdrawn (Durand 1992), the generally accepted boundaries of this entity roughly correspond with the area of rapid spread of full-body corrugation with the exception of the far western and northern extensions. The eleventh century also provides the first secure evidence for specialized production and long-distance trade of utility ware pottery. In the early eleventh century, corrugated pots produced along the eastern flanks of the Chuska Mountains constitute half of all culinary pottery recovered from settlements in Chaco Canyon located over 90 km to the east (Toll 1991). This level of movement of culinary pottery into Chaco Canyon represents a dramatic increase over earlier periods.
 Figure 15. Map showing a reconstruction of the spread of full-body, indented corrugation in the American Southwest.
Evidence from the Mesa Verde region suggests that the population expansion and increased trade of culinary pottery during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries played a role in the relatively rapid spread and adoption of full-body corrugation in that area. Although the late ninth or very early tenth centuries saw the abandonment of most of the Dolores River valley (Blinman 1994; Kane 1986), some sites show signs of reoccupation by small groups in the late tenth century. At McPhee Village, one of the large ninth century settlement clusters in the Dolores valley, two of the settlements (McPhee Pueblo and nearby Masa Negra Pueblo) were reoccupied in the middle to late tenth century by approximately 13 households (Brisbin et al. 1988; Kuckelman 1988b). Indented corrugated fragments from vessel bodies were recovered from these late occupations at both settlements. In addition, these late tenth century ceramic assemblages contain unusually high proportions of pottery manufactured in the Chuska and Cibola areas of the southern San Juan basin (Blinman and Wilson 1988a). Whether this increase in nonlocal pottery resulted from immigration of people from the southern San Juan, or increased trade between the two areas has not been determined. However, regardless of the mechanisms involved, these data indicate increased interaction of some sort with the potential of transmitting the new trait of full-body corrugation.
In the Rio Grande areas, however, evidence suggests a more complex set of mechanisms involved in the spread of corrugation. At least some of the corrugated pottery made in the Rio Grande valley was manufactured differently from corrugated pottery found elsewhere. Although the general appearance is similar, the forming techniques differed in an unusual way. Specifically, rather than applying and overlapping coils so that they slope down and away from the vessel as was done in the Mesa Verde region and elsewhere in the Southwest, some potters in the Rio Grande area applied their coils so that they overlap toward the inside of the vessel (Eric Blinman, personal communication). One possible reason for this difference is that the spread of corrugation into the Rio Grande involved the movement of pottery rather than the specific knowledge or instructions on how to make corrugated vessels. In evolutionary terms, it was the pottery that was the replicator in some cases, rather than particular behaviors or ideas.
In addition, recent research on eleventh and twelfth century Valdez Phase sites in the Taos area indicates that, although plain pottery dominates utility ware assemblages, a wide variety of corrugation techniques, including Kana'a style neck banding to indented corrugation, occur in very low frequencies (usually less than 1% of utility wares) at these sites (Wilson 1995). Some of this corrugated pottery appears to have been manufactured locally while others were imported. As noted above, indented corrugation was not a common feature of Taos area pottery until the thirteenth century. However, the designs on Valdez Phase painted pottery are very similar to those used at the same time farther south in the Rio Grande valley and on the Colorado Plateau to the west (Wilson 1995). These differences in the timing of the spread of painted designs and corrugation techniques indicate that simple migration or diffusion models cannot account for their introduction. Instead, more complex political or social factors may have been involved in the spread of different pottery-making technologies to the Taos area.
In the Four Corners area, full-body indented corrugation continued to dominate utility ware assemblages until Pueblo people abandoned the region at the end of the thirteenth century. Indented corrugation also appeared on a small proportion of painted, white ware pottery; most commonly on the exterior of bowls during the eleventh century, and on the necks of narrow-mouth jars (ollas) during the thirteenth century. In the Mogollon areas and the Tonto Basin, corrugation of bowls was much more common than among Pueblo populations living on the Colorado Plateau. Full-body corrugation, in various forms, continued to be manufactured and, in most areas to dominate utility ware assemblages until, at least, the middle of the fifteenth century when Pueblo potters returned to making plain-surface utility vessels (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Gifford and Smith 1978:18; Hays 1991; Kidder and Shepard 1936; Lang 1982).
During the more than four hundred years that indented corrugation was used in the manufacture of utility wares, Pueblo society experienced a wide variety of changes including large-scale population movements, regional abandonments, and momentous changes in climate, social organization, and ideology (Adams 1991; Adler 1996; Dean 1996; Lipe 1989). After the large-scale adoption of full-body corrugation, the techniques used to produce corrugated vessels did not remain static, but continued to vary. Innovations came mainly in the areas of vessel morphology, and the elaboration of patterns created by the placement of indentations and appliques (Breternitz et al. 1974; Colton 1955; Gifford and Smith 1978). In addition, some plain utility vessels continued to be made throughout the period of dominance by corrugation, with some regions showing more variation than others. On the Colorado Plateau, most of these later plain types, such as Mummy Lake Gray in the Mesa Verde region and Kiet Siel Gray in the Kayenta region, were actually produced by smearing or obliterating corrugations (Breternitz et al. 1974; Colton 1955 ). In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, this long-standing, yet sporadically employed, technique of smearing corrugations became much more common and widespread. By the middle to late fifteenth century, pottery with smeared or blind corrugations was eventually replaced by entirely plain vessels (Kidder and Shepard 1936; Spier 1917). When the Spanish arrived in the Southwest during the sixteenth century, corrugation was not a part of the Pueblo pottery technology they observed.
Refernces Cited
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