Dating Snaketown

Abstract

The development of a refined chronology and ceramic sequence for the heartland of the Hohokam Culture in southern and central Arizona is discussed. The refined sequence is applied to ceramic sherd lots and restorable vessels from the extant collections from excavations at Snaketown to produce new and more refined dating of the contexts at the site. Structures, mortuary contexts, caches, mounds, middens, pits, and other features are dated with the results compared to prior chronological assignments allowing for a discussion of how the new chronology compares to previous approaches. In the process, key events in the history of the settlement that affect conclusions about Hohokam prehistory are considered such as the age of mound capping events, the construction of the ball courts and Mound 16 platform mound, and the origin and terminus of occupation at the village.

En este artículo discutimos el desarrollo de una cronología y de una secuencia cerámica refinadas para el núcleo geográfico del territorio de la Cultura Hohokam del sur y centro de Arizona. La secuencia refinada se aplica a lotes de tiestos cerámicos y vasijas restaurables de las colecciones existentes provenientes de las excavaciones de Snaketown con el objetivo de producir una nueva y más refinada datación de los contextos del sitio. Estructuras, contextos funerarios, cachés, montículos, vertederos, pozos, y otros elementos arqueológicos son fechados y los resultados son comparados con las asignaciones cronológicas anteriores para discutir las diferencias entre la nueva cronología y los métodos previos. En el proceso, sucesos clave de la historia del asentamiento que han afectado las interpretaciones sobre la prehistoria Hohokam son considerados, tales como las fechas de eventos de tapado de montículos, la construcción de los juegos de pelota y de la plataforma del Montículo 16, y el origen y el final de la ocupación del sitio.

KEYWORDS:

• Snaketown
• Hohokam
• Middle Gila
• ball court
• seriation
• buff ware
• Haury
• chronology

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a far-sighted anonymous donor to Archaeology Southwest to whom I will be forever grateful. The seeds for this paper were germinated in a 2001 Society for American Archaeology session organized by Paul and Suzanne Fish and the subsequent book that was planned (but did not happen). I thank Paul and Suzy for the helpful comments, discussions, and information they provided, often at random times over the years with my various inquiries. Dave Abbott, who fostered my initial seriation efforts during the Grewe project, provided invaluable assistance and critique during that project and he was instrumental in helping the new typology escape the bounds of a contract report to become something now widely adopted. He also fostered students who applied and tested the new sequence. I am forever grateful for your help Dave. A special debt is owed Alexa Smith, who worked closely with me to document the Snaketown collections. Alexa was always cheerful, helpful, and professional, and was an excellent ceramic analyst.

I am also grateful to all of those individuals who helped me in ways too varied to mention here but are included in the acknowledgements for the technical reports I generated for the 2001 and 2004 buff ware seriations, especially those who helped at the Arizona State Museum. I especially thank Jim Heidke who has always been a wonderful sounding board. Bill Doelle and more recently Sarah Herr deserve special acknowledgement for supporting my research at Desert Archaeology and Archaeology Southwest. The two of them have been incredibly understanding and supportive over the course of some difficult years. I treasure their support and friendship. Paul Fish and two anonymous reviewers provided very helpful comments that improved this manuscript. Debra Martin, as reviewing editor, was very helpful, guiding me through the new process for adding data to tDAR. Finally, my gratitude and love for my family. The projects leading to this paper sometimes resulted in a brain-numb comatose husband/father as I worked on the very difficult buff ware seriations. My wife, Cyndi, and daughters Jenelle and Kristin helped keep me grounded and sane. For any errors or omissions, don't blame it on them … it is my sole responsibility.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://core.tdar.org/project/455387/dating-snaketown

Notes

1 753 of the vessels were illustrated and metric and nonmetric data were recorded on 816 of the vessels. Some vessels were not illustrated due to condition (too fragmentary or design not discernible). Some vessels from the site remain in the collections of the Chicago Field Museum and the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.

2 Supplemental tables referenced as tDAR Table _ are available at https://core.tdar.org/project/455387/dating-snaketown

3 The extant vessels from them are illustrated in Wallace (2004b).