The
Mogollon is one of the four major prehistoric
archaeologicalArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
culture areas of the American Southwest and Northern
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. The
American IndianNative Americans in the United States is the phrase that describes indigenous peoples from North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of...
culture known as the Mogollon lived in the southwest from approximately AD 150 until sometime between AD 1400 and AD 1450. The name Mogollon comes from the
Mogollon MountainsThe Mogollon Mountains or Mogollon Range are a mountain range east of the San Francisco River in Grant and Catron counties of southwestern New Mexico, between the communities of Reserve and Silver City. They extend roughly north-south for about 30 miles , and form part of the divide between the San...
, which were named after Don Juan Ignacio Flores Mogollón, Spanish Governor of New Mexico from 1712-1715.
The Mogollon archaeological area was first recognized by
Emil HauryEmil Walter "Doc" Haury was an influential archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of the American Southwest....
, following work at two archaeological sites (the Harris Village in the town of Mimbres, New Mexico, and the Mogollon Village, on the upper San Francisco River) in southwestern New Mexico in 1933 and 1934.
The
Mogollon is one of the four major prehistoric
archaeologicalArchaeology or archeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes...
culture areas of the American Southwest and Northern
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. The
American IndianNative Americans in the United States is the phrase that describes indigenous peoples from North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of...
culture known as the Mogollon lived in the southwest from approximately AD 150 until sometime between AD 1400 and AD 1450. The name Mogollon comes from the
Mogollon MountainsThe Mogollon Mountains or Mogollon Range are a mountain range east of the San Francisco River in Grant and Catron counties of southwestern New Mexico, between the communities of Reserve and Silver City. They extend roughly north-south for about 30 miles , and form part of the divide between the San...
, which were named after Don Juan Ignacio Flores Mogollón, Spanish Governor of New Mexico from 1712-1715.
Cultural history
The Mogollon archaeological area was first recognized by
Emil HauryEmil Walter "Doc" Haury was an influential archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of the American Southwest....
, following work at two archaeological sites (the Harris Village in the town of Mimbres, New Mexico, and the Mogollon Village, on the upper San Francisco River) in southwestern New Mexico in 1933 and 1934. Haury recognized that superficial similarities with the
HohokamHohokam is one of the four major prehistoric archaeological traditions of what is now the American Southwest. Variant spellings in current, official usage include Hobokam, Huhugam and Huhukam. The culture was differentiated from others in the region in the 1930s by archaeologist Harold S...
archaeological culture and the
Ancient PuebloAncient Pueblo People or Ancestral Puebloans were an ancient Native American culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the United States -- comprised of southern Utah, northern Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and a lesser section of Colorado...
("Anasazi") archaeological culture, including (initially unpainted) brown-paste pottery and the use of surface "pueblo" dwellings were insufficient to firmly characterize the inhabitants of the Mogollon region as subdivisions of these other archaeologically known cultures. Five decades of subsequent research conducted by teams based out of the
Field Museum of Natural HistoryThe Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...
, the
Arizona State MuseumThe Arizona State Museum , founded in 1893, was originally a repository for the collection and protection of archaeological resources. Today, however, ASM stores artifacts, exhibits them and provides education and research opportunities. It was formed by authority of the Territorial Legislature....
at the
University of ArizonaThe University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
, the
Amerind FoundationThe Amerind Foundation is museum and research facility dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Native American cultures and their histories...
, and the Mimbres Foundation, confirmed Haury's initial findings. Today, the distinctiveness of the Mogollon culture area in pottery manufacture, architectural construction, ground-stone tool design, and habits and customs of residence location and mortuary treatment are generally recognized.
Mogollon origins remain a matter of speculation. One model holds that the Mogollon emerged from a preceding "Desert Archaic" tradition that links Mogollon ancestry with the first (late Pleistocene) prehistoric human occupations of area (around 9000 B.C.). In this model, cultural distinctions emerged in the larger region when populations grew great enough to establish villages and even larger communities. An alternative possibility holds that the Mogollon were descendants of early farmers who migrated from farming regions in central Mexico around 3500 B.C., and who displaced descendants of the antecedent Desert Archaic peoples.
Research on Mogollon culture has led to the recognition of regional variants, of which the most widely recognized in popular media is the "
MimbresMimbres may refer to:*Mimbres culture a subdivision of Mogollon culture;*Mimbres pottery style or designs, a particular style of pottery decoration from the Mimbres culture;...
culture" (Mimbres Mogollon branch). Others include the Jornada, Forestdale, Reserve, Point of Pines (or "Black River"), San Simon, and Upper Gila branches. Although the Mimbres culture is the most well-known subset of the Mogollon archaeological culture-area, the entire Mogollon occupation spans a greater interval of time (roughly one millennium) and a vastly larger area than is encompassed by the Mimbres culture.
Mimbres culture
"Mimbres" may, depending on its context, refer to a tradition within a subregion of the Mogollon culture area (the Mimbres branch or the Mimbres Mogollon) or to an interval of time, the "Classic Mimbres phase" (also known as the "Mimbres culture"; A.D. 1000-1130, roughly) within the Mimbres branch.
The Mimbres branch is a subset of the larger Mogollon culture area, centered in the Mimbres Valley and encompassing the upper Gila river and parts of the upper San Francisco river in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona as well as the Rio Grande Valley and it western tributaries in southwest New Mexico. Differentiation between the Mimbres branch and other areas of the Mogollon culture area is most apparent during the Three Circle (A.D. 825-1000 roughly) and Classic Mimbres (A.D. 1000-1150) phases, when architectural construction and black and white painted pottery assume locally distinctive forms and styles. Classic Mimbres phase pottery is particularly famous pottery, and Classic Mimbres pottery designs were duplicated on Santa Fe Railroad dinnerware during the early 20th century.
Three Circle phase (A.D. 825/850-1000) pithouse villages within the Mimbres branch are distinctive. Houses are consistently quadrilateral, usually with sharply angled corners, with well-plastered floors and walls, and average approximately 17 square meters in floor surface area. Local pottery styles include early forms of Mimbres black and white ("boldface"), red-on-cream, and textured plainwares. Large ceremonial structures (often called "kivas") are deeply excavated into the ground, and often include distinctive ceremonial features such as foot drums or log grooves.
Classic Mimbres phase (A.D. 1000-1130) pueblos can be quite large, with some composed of clusters of compounds or roomblocks, each containing up to 150 rooms, and grouped around an open plaza. Ceremonial structures were different from the previous pithouse periods. Most coomon were ceremonial rooms within roomblocks. Smaller square or rectangular semi-subterranean
kivaA kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies....
s with roof openings are also found. (It should be noted that the word "kiva," a Hopi term with specific meaning, has generally been applied to "Anasazi" or Northern Pueblo populations. It may be a poor term in discussing the Mogollon in their broadest contexts.) The largest Classic Mimbres sites are located near wide areas of well-watered floodplain suitable for maize agriculture, although smaller villages exist in upland areas.
Mimbres pottery
The pottery produced in the Mimbres region, often finely painted bowls, is distinct in style and is decorated with geometric designs and figurative paintings of animals, people and cultural icons in black paint on a white background. Some of these images suggest familiarity and relationships with cultures in northern and central
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. The elaborate decoration indicates that these people enjoyed a rich ceremonial life. Early Mimbres Black-on-white pottery, called Boldface Black-on-White (now called Mimbres Style I), is primarily characterized by bold geometic designs, although there are also a few early examples of human and animal figures. Over time, both geometric and figurative designs became increasingly sophisticated and diverse. Classic Mimbres Black-on-White pottery (Style III) is characterized by elaborate geometric designs, refined brushwork, including very fine linework, and may include figures of one or more animals, humans, or other images bounded either by simple rim bands or by geometric decoration. Birds figure prominently on Mimbres pots, including images such as turkeys feeding on insects and a man trapping birds in a garden; fish are also common.
Mimbres bowls are often found associated with burials, typically with a hole punched out of the center. Most commonly Mimbres bowls have been found covering the face of the interred person. Wear marks on the insides of bowls show they were actually used, not just produced as burial items.
Mimbres pottery is so distinctive that until fairly recently, the end of its production around A.D. 1130-1150 was equated with the "disappearance" of the people who made it. More recent research indicates that substantial depopulation did occur in the Mimbres Valley, but some remnant populations persisted there. Both there and in surrounding areas, people changed their pottery styles to more closely resemble those of neighboring culture areas, and dispersed into other residential sites with different types of architecture.
Geographic location
The Mogollon settled high-altitude desert areas in what is today
New MexicoNew Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. Inhabited by Native American populations for many centuries, it has also been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S...
,
SonoraSonora is a state in northwestern Mexico with an area of 182,052 square kilometers, making it around the size of Syria. It is surrounded by the states of Baja California and the Sea of Cortez to the west, Chihuahua to the east, Sinaloa to the south, and Arizona to the north.The capital is...
,
ChihuahuaAlthough Chihuahua is primarily identified with its namesake, the Chihuahuan Desert, it has more forests than any other state. On the slope of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains , there are vast prairies of short yellow grass, the source of the bulk of the state's agricultural production.As of...
and western
TexasTexas is the second-largest U.S. state in both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States.The name had wide usage among native Americans, meaning "friends" or "allies"...
. The Mogollon were, initially, foragers who augmented their subsistence efforts by farming. Through the first millennium A.D., however, dependence of farming probably increased. Water control features are common among Mimbres branch sites from the 10th through 12 centuries.
The nature and density of Mogollon residential villages changed through time. The earliest Mogollon villages are little more than hamlets composed of several pit-houses (houses excavated into the ground surface, with stick and thatch roofs supported by a network of posts and beams, and faced on the exterior with earth). Village sizes increase through time, however, and in the 11th century surface pueblos (ground level dwellings made with rock and earth walls, and with roofs supported by post and beam networks) were common. Cliff Dwellings become common during the 13th and 14th centuries.
Archaeological record
Archaeological sites attributed to the Mogollon culture are found in the
Gila WildernessGila Wilderness was designated the world's first wilderness area on June 3, 1924. Along with Aldo Leopold Wilderness and Blue Range Wilderness, the wilderness is part of New Mexico's Gila National Forest. The wilderness is approximately from north to south and east to west...
,
Mimbres River ValleyThe Mimbres River forms from snow pack and runoff on the south-western slopes of the Black Range and flows into a small endorheic basin in southwestern New Mexico. The uplands watershed are administered by the US Forest Service, while the land in the valley lands is mostly privately owned. Much...
, along the Upper Gila river, Paquime and
Hueco TanksHueco Tanks is an area of low mountains in Texas, USA. It is located in a high-altitude desert basin between the Franklin Mountains to the west and the Hueco Mountains to the east. Hueco is a Spanish word meaning hollows and refers to the many water-holding depressions in the boulders and rock...
, an area of low mountains between the Franklin Mountains to the west and the Hueco Mountains to the east.
Gila Cliff Dwellings National MonumentGila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is a U.S. National Monument in the Gila Wilderness of southwestern New Mexico. The national monument was established by executive proclamation on November 16, 1907, by President Theodore Roosevelt. It is located in the extreme southern part of Catron County...
in southwestern New Mexico was established as a national monument on 16 November 1907. It contains several archaeological sites attributed to the Mimbres branch. At the headwaters of the Gila, Mimbres populations adjoined another more northern branch of the Mogollon culture. The TJ Ruin, for example, is a Classic Mimbres phase pueblo, however the cliff dwellings are Tularosa phase. The name Hueco Tanks has been also given to an historic site, approximately 32 miles (51.5 km) northeast of
El Paso, TexasEl Paso is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and part of the American Southwest. According to the United States Census Bureau's 2006 population estimates, the city had a population of 606,913. It is the sixth-largest city in Texas and the 22nd-largest city in...
. The site is culturally and spiritually significant to many
American IndiansNative Americans in the United States is the phrase that describes indigenous peoples from North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of...
, partially due to the pictographs that can be found throughout the region, many of which are thousands of years old.
Descendants
The area originally settled by the Mogollon culture was eventually filled by the unrelated
ApacheApache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the American Southwest. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, and are related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
people, who moved in from the north. However, the modern Pueblo people in the Southwest claim descent from the Mogollon and related cultures, although these people generally assert that their descent was from more than one group and location. Archaeologists believe that the Western Pueblo villages of the
HopiThe Hopi are American Indians people who primarily live on the 12,635 km² Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi Reservation is entirely surrounded by the much larger Navajo Reservation. The two nations used to share the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area...
and
ZuniThe Zuni or A:shiwi are a Native American tribe, one of the Pueblo peoples, most of whom live in the Pueblo of Zuni on the Zuni River, a tributary of the Little Colorado River, in western New Mexico, United States...
are very likely related to the Mogollon.
See also
- Mogollon Rim
The Mogollon Rim is a topographical and geological feature running across the U.S. state of Arizona. It extends approximately from northern Yavapai County eastward to near the border with New Mexico.-Description:...
- Oasisamerica
Oasisamerica was a broad cultural area in pre-Columbian North America. It extended from modern-day Utah down to southern Chihuahua, and from the Sonoran coast on the Gulf of California eastward to the Río Bravo river valley...
- Patayan
Patayan is a term used by archaeologists to describe prehistoric and historic Native American cultures who inhabited parts of modern day Arizona, California and Baja California, including areas near the Colorado River Valley, the nearby uplands, and north to the vicinity of the Grand Canyon between...
- Pre-historic Southwestern Cultural Divisions
Further reading
- Anyon, Roger A., and Steven A. LeBlanc. The Galaz Ruin: A Prehistoric Mimbres Village in Southwestern New Mexico. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 1984. ISBN 0-8263-0748-5.
- Brody, J. J. Mimbres painted pottery School of American Research, Santa Fe, N.M. 1977. ISBN 0-8263-0452-4
- Diehl, Michael W., and Steven A. LeBlanc. Early Pithouse Villages of the Mimbres Valley and Beyond: The McAnally and Thompson Sites in their Cultural and Ecological Contexts. Papers No. 83. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 2001. ISBN 0-87365-211-8.
- Hegmon, Michelle (2002) "Recent Issues in the Archaeology of the Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest" Journal of Archaeological Research 10(4): 307-357.
- Hegmon, Michelle, Margaret C. Nelson, and Susan M. Ruth (1998) "Abandonment and Reorganization in the Mimbres Region of the American Southwest." American Anthropologist 100(1):148-162.
- LeBlanc, Steven A. The Mimbres People: Ancient Pueblo painters of the American Southwest. Thames and Hudson Ltd, New York, 1983, ISBN 0-500-39017-7
- Nelson, Margaret C. and Michelle Hegmon (2001) "Abandonment is not as it seems: An Approach to the Relationship Between Site and Regional Abandonment." American Antiquity 66(2):213-235.
- Nelson, Margaret C., Michelle Hegmon, Stephanie Kulow, and Karen Gust Schollmeyer (2006) "Archaeological and Ecological Perspectives on Reorganization: a Case Study from the Mimbres Region of the U.S. Southwest." American Antiquity 71(3):403-432.
- Shafer, Harry J. Mimbres Archaeology at the NAN Ranch Ruin. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 2003. ISBN 0-8263-2204-2
- Shafer, Harry J. "Architecture and Symbolism in Tansitional Pueblo Development in the Mimbres Valley, SW New Mexico." 1995 Journal of Field Archaeology 22(1): 23-47.
- Shafer, Harry J, Marianne Marek, and K. J. Reinhard, "A Mimbres Burial with Associated Colon Remains from the NAN Ranch Ruin, New Mexico." 1989. Journal of Field Archaeology 16: 17-30.
- Shafer, Harry J. and Robbie L. Brewington, "Microstylistic Changes in mimbres Black-on-White Pottery: Examples from the NAN Ruin, Grant County, New Mexico" 1995. Kiva 64(3): 5-29.
External links