The National Science Foundation will support research on prehistoric ceramic manufacture and exchange in southern Arizona, advancing knowledge about Native American migrations and population interactions before European contact. Dr. Margaret Beck is studying the relationships between sedentary Hohokam agriculturalists (related to the modern O'odham) and more mobile Lowland Patayan groups (perhaps related to Yuman-speaking groups such as the modern Maricopa). The territories of these groups overlapped along the Hohokam western frontier, near what is now Gila Bend, Arizona. Current archaeological evidence suggests that after A.D. 1000-1100, Patayan groups may have migrated into traditional Hohokam territory to the east, contributing to the formation of the multi-ethnic communities seen in the historical and modern periods.
In this study, Patayan population movements will be identified through the spread of Patayan potters into Hohokam territory, who would have manufactured Patayan vessels using local materials. The primary hypothesis is that that many of the Patayan ceramics recovered from Hohokam territory were manufactured there, reflecting resident Patayan potters, and were not imported from western Lowland Patayan territory. In order to see patterns of regional exchange and migration, the places of manufacture for Patayan and other ceramics will be determined using chemical composition analysis specifically, instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) for 350 ceramic fragments and 20 natural clay samples. These data will be combined with data from a large regional INAA database to trace ceramics to their place of manufacture, and will create a still-larger database for future researchers. The INAA patterns will be combined with other lines of evidence from other studies, including ceramic, shell, obsidian, and petroglyph distributions, to better understand regional exchange patterns and the extent and significance of eastward Patayan migration.
Patayan-Hohokam relationships are of anthropological interest as another potential case of interaction, interdependence, and kinship ties between two groups with visibly different settlement patterns and economies. Such relationships have been documented worldwide between foragers or other relatively mobile groups and adjacent sedentary food producers, although the nature and intensity of these relationships varies. The late prehistoric social landscape studied here also sets the stage for later developments in the region. Patayan migration into Hohokam territory in the Middle Gila, Salt, and Santa Cruz River valleys contributed to regional social and cultural change in the last few centuries of prehistory. Their experience is important to our understanding of interactions between groups of different social and economic complexity, habitation and adaptation in the Papagueria of southwestern Arizona, the changing cultural landscape in the Hohokam Classic period (ca. A. D. 1150-1450), and the development of historical-period and modern Native American groups in the region. The roots of historical-period territories and interactions in the southern Southwest lie in the prehistoric period addressed by this study. This project can significantly contribute to a larger discussion between professional archaeologists, Native American communities, and the general public about regional interaction in the late prehistoric and protohistoric periods.
