In late prehistory, the ancestors of the present-day Hopi in Arizona created a unique and spectacular painted pottery tradition referred to as Hopi Yellow Ware. This ceramic tradition, which includes Sikyatki Polychrome pottery, inspired Hopi potter Nampeyo’s revival pottery at the turn of the twentieth century. How did such a unique and unprecedented painting style develop? The authors compiled a corpus of almost 2,000 images of Hopi Yellow Ware bowls from the Peabody Museum’s collection and other museums. Focusing their work on the exterior, glyphlike painted designs of these bowls, they found that the “glyphs” could be placed into sets and apparently acted as a kind of signature. The authors argue that part-time specialists were engaged in making this pottery and that relatively few households manufactured Hopi Yellow Ware during the more than 300 years of its production.Extending the Peabody’s influential Awatovi project of the 1930s, Symbols in Clay calls into question deep-seated assumptions about pottery production and specialization in the precontact American Southwest.
Southwestern archaeologists have long speculated about the scale and impact of ancient population movements. In Ancestral Hopi Migrations, Patrick Lyons infers the movement of large numbers of people from the Kayenta and Tusayan regions of northern Arizona to every major river valley in Arizona, parts of New Mexico, and northern Mexico. Building upon earlier studies, Lyons uses chemical sourcing of ceramics and analyses of painted pottery designs to distinguish among traces of exchange, emulation, and migration. He demonstrates strong similarities among the pottery traditions of the Kayenta region, the Hopi Mesas, and the Homol'ovi villages, near Winslow, Arizona. Architectural evidence marshaled by Lyons corroborates his conclusion that the inhabitants of Homol'ovi were immigrants from the north. Placing the Homol'ovi case study in a larger context, Lyons synthesizes evidence of northern immigrants recovered from sites dating between A.D. 1250 and 1450. His data support Patricia Crown's contention that the movement of these groups is linked to the origin of the Salado polychromes and further indicate that these immigrants and their descendants were responsible for the production of Roosevelt Red Ware throughout much of the Greater Southwest. Offering an innovative juxtaposition of anthropological data bearing on Hopi migrations and oral accounts of the tribe's origin and history, Lyons highlights the many points of agreement between these two bodies of knowledge. Lyons argues that appreciating the scale of population movement that characterized the late prehistoric period is prerequisite to understanding regional phenomena such as Salado and to illuminating the connections between tribal peoples of the Southwest and their ancestors.
Homol'ovi II is a fourteenth-century, ancestral Hopi pueblo with over 700 rooms. Although known by archaeologists since 1896, no systematic excavations were conducted at the pueblo until 1984. This report summarizes the findings of the excavations by the Arizona State Museum of five rooms and an outside activity area, which now form the core of the interpretive program for Homolovi Ruins State Park. The significant findings reported here are that the excavated deposits date between A.D. 1340 and 1400; that nearly all the decorated ceramics during this period were imported from villages on the Hopi Mesas; that cotton was a principal crop which probably formed the basis of Homol'ovi II's participation in regional exchange; that chipped stone was a totally expedient technology in contrast to ground stone which was becoming more diverse; and that the katsina cult was probably present or developing at Homol'ovi II. These findings from the basis for future excavations that should broaden our knowledge of the developments taking place in fourteenth-century Pueblo society connecting the people whom archaeologists term the Anasazi with those calling themselves Hopi.
Southwestern archaeology has long been fascinated with the scale and frequency of movement in Pueblo history, from great migrations to short-term mobility. By collaborating with Pueblo communities, archaeologists are learning that movement was—and is—much more than the result of economic opportunity or a response to social conflict. Movement is one of the fundamental concepts of Pueblo thought and is essential in shaping the identities of contemporary Pueblos. The Continuous Path challenges archaeologists to take Pueblo notions of movement seriously by privileging Pueblo concepts of being and becoming in the interpretation of anthropological data. In this volume, archaeologists, anthropologists, and Native community members weave multiple perspectives together to write histories of particular Pueblo peoples. Within these histories are stories of the movements of people, materials, and ideas, as well as the interconnectedness of all as the Pueblo people find, leave, and return to their middle places. What results is an emphasis on historical continuities and the understanding that the same concepts of movement that guided the actions of Pueblo people in the past continue to do so into the present and the future. Movement is a never-ending and directed journey toward an ideal existence and a continuous path of becoming. This path began as the Pueblo people emerged from the underworld and sought their middle places, and it continues today at multiple levels, integrating the people, the village, and the individual.
To reconstruct or not to reconstruct? That is the question facing many agencies and site managers throughout the world. While reconstructed sites provide a three-dimensional pedagogic environment in which visitors can acquire a heightened sense of the past, an ethical conflict emerges when on-site reconstructions and restorations contribute to the damage or destruction of the original archaeological record. The case studies in this volume contribute to the ongoing debates between data and material authenticity and educational and interpretive value of reconstructions. Discussing diverse reconstruction sites from the Golan Region to Colonial Williamsburg, the authors present worldwide examples that have been affected by agency policies, divergent presentation philosophies, and political and economic realities.
Homol'ovi III is the smallest of the seven primary villages comprising the Homol'ovi cluster. The work by Arizona State Museum in the late 1980s that is summarized in this volume was the first since J. Walter Fewkes spent a few days excavating in 1896. Homol'ovi III provides a unique perspective on the development of the Homol'ovi settlement cluster in the late 1200s and through most of the 1300s. Founded by immigrants as a small settlement of six or seven families between 1280 and 1290 on the floodplain of the Little Colorado River, it grew to a community of perhaps 75 people occupying 40-50 rooms by the late 1290s. Abandonment of Homol'ovi III shortly after 1300 correlates with increased stream flow that made its location on the floodplain untenable. In all likelihood, the inhabitants moved upstream 5 km to join occupants of Homol'ovi I. However, the use history of the village was just beginning. In the 1330s and 1340s, Homol'ovi III was used as a fieldhouse, probably by its former occupants, developing into a small farming village of 2-4 families from the 1350s to the 1370s. In conjunction with these seasonal occupations, many parts of the village were remodeled, the small plaza area was constantly in use, and even a small kiva was built. The latest occupation also witnessed use of the plaza as a bird cemetery. The complex history of Homol'ovi III informs us about the details of life along the Little Colorado River over a century of use by ancestral Hopi people. The volume focuses on an in-depth narrative of architecture, environment, and material culture analyses from five years of excavations by the Arizona State Museum and provides detailed information for students of latepueblo prehistory.
The Grand Circle Tour is a circuit around a ring of National Parks and Native American sites in the Four Corners Region of the Southwest. It encompasses some of the most significant ancient history in North America: remanants of the Anasazi civilization. From the well-known sites like Zion and Bryce to the little known and well-preserved areas, Royea provides the kind of detailed guidance never before available in guidebook form. The Grand Circle Tour consists of two parts: Part 1 is divided into 14 days and visits 21 different sites, with an additional 20 sites covered that are nearby. The second part of the book has a timeline for the Anasazi. It's a history of Native American occupation of the Southwest from 10,000BC to the present day. The book can be used as a general travel guide or as the basis for an in-depth, historical tour. It is so filled with historical and cultural detail (complimented by photos, maps, and site plans) that it can even provide a satisfying armchair "tour" of the region.
Beginning sometime in the thirteenth century, people from the Hopi Mesas established a cluster of villages to the south along the Little Colorado River, attracted by the riverÕs resources and the region's ideal conditions for growing cotton. By the late 1300s, these Homol'ovi villages were the center of a robust trade in cotton among many clusters of villages near or on the southern Colorado Plateau and were involved in the beginning of katsina religion. Charles Adams has directed fifteen years of research at these sites for the Arizona State Museum, including excavations in five of the seven primary Homol'ovi villages and in other villages predating them. Through this research he concludes that the founders of these settlements were Hopis who sought to protect their territory from migrating groups elsewhere in the Pueblo world. This book summarizes that research and broadens our understanding of the relationship of Homol'ovi to ancient and modern Hopi people. Each Homol'ovi village had a unique history of establishment, growth, sociopolitical organization, length of occupation, and abandonment; and although the villages shared much in the way of material culture, their size and configuration were tremendously varied. By comparing Homol'ovi research to information from projects on other settlements in the area, Adams has been able to reconstruct a provocative history of the Homol'ovi cluster that includes relationships among the individual villages and their relationships to nearby clusters. He shows that social organization within villages is apparent by the number and variety of ritual structures, while political organization among villages is indicated by the need for cooperation to share water for irrigation and by the exchange of such materials as pottery, obsidian, and ground stone. Adams advances several important theories about why Homol'ovi was founded where and when it was, who its founders were, and the importance of cotton in making Homol'ovi an important center of trade in the 1300s. He also considers why Pueblo settlements suddenly became so large, addressing theoretical issues pertaining to multiple settlements and the rise of enormous villages containing more than 1,000 rooms. Homol'ovi is a rich work of synthesis and interpretation that will be important for anyone with an interest in Southwest archaeology, Arizona history, or Hopi culture.
