Lowland Patayan Pottery: A History, Crisis, and Manifesto

ABSTRACT

Archaeologists working in the far western Southwest distinguish the Lowland Patayan tradition by virtue of a distinctive, typically undecorated, light-colored pottery found along the lower Gila and lower Colorado rivers and in surrounding deserts. Known generally as “Lower Colorado Buff Ware,” research into Lowland Patayan pottery has a convoluted history, including the formulation of multiple typologies that are incompatible and whose chronologies contradict each other. This article discusses this history and critically evaluates the prevailing typology to expose some of its shortcomings. It also presents some data amassed over the past 40 years to show that the chronology girding it is inaccurate. To overcome this problem, I suggest that researchers of Lowland Patayan pottery temporarily set aside the ceramic type concept and consider the importance of attributes in relation to well-defined research questions, with particular attention directed at chronological refinement and material sourcing.

RESUMEN

Los arqueólogos que trabajan en el sudoeste del suroeste distinguen la tradición de las tierras bajas Patayan en virtud de una cerámica distintiva, típicamente sin decorar, de color claro que se encuentra a lo largo del bajo río Gila y del bajo río Colorado y en los desiertos circundantes. Conocido generalmente como “Lower Colorado Buff Ware,” la investigación sobre la cerámica de las tierras bajas Patayan tiene una historia complicada, incluida la formulación de múltiples tipologías que son incompatibles y cuyas cronologías se contradicen entre sí. En este artículo, destapo esta historia y evalúo críticamente la tipología prevaleciente para exponer algunas de sus deficiencias. También sintetizo datos acumulados en los últimos 40 años para mostrar que la cronología que lo confirma es inexacta. Para superar este problema, sugiero que los investigadores de la alfarería Patayan de tierras bajas dejen de lado temporalmente el concepto de tipo cerámico y consideren la importancia de los atributos en relación con las preguntas de investigación bien definidas, con especial atención dirigida al refinamiento cronológico y al abastecimiento de material.

KEYWORDS:

• Patayan
• Yuman
• Gila and Colorado rivers
• Lower Colorado Buff Ware
• pottery
• ceramics
• typology
• taxonomy

Acknowledgments

I prepared an earlier version of this manuscript as part of a cultural resource overview of four National Wildlife refuges on the lower Colorado River (Wright 2018). I thank Homer Thiel, Senior Project Director at Desert Archaeology, Inc., and David Siegel, Cultural Resource Manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southwest Region, for the invitation to contribute. I improved upon that version through ongoing discussions with many people familiar with the problems raised, including Jerry Schaefer, Don Laylander, John Hildebrand, Jill McCormick, Linda Gregonis, and Rick Martynec. Much of our conversation occurred and continues through the biannual Lower Colorado Buff Ware Workshop, jointly organized by Rick, Linda, and Jill. I am grateful to these participants’ insights, and the feedback provided by six anonymous reviewers, but I take full responsibility for any errors or shortcomings in this article.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 Schroeder’s application of series as a ceramic taxonomic unit is in line with what Wheat, Gifford, and Wasley (1958, 35) published six years later when they defined a ceramic series as a corpus of contemporaneous pottery types of similar technology and associated with a specific region.

2 While Rogers included a Palomas Red-on-buff in his unpublished typology (Table 1), his notes do not include a type description, probably because he had not found any. His remarks on this type name state “None has been found as yet” (Rogers 1945c). It was apparently a conceptual designation awaiting confirmation. He later penciled under the decoration subsection for the Palomas Buff type description the statement: “Later evidence shows that there is a Palomas Red on Buff but that it is rare.” This entry is undated but must have been added prior to Rogers’ death in 1960, which precedes Schroeder’s (1961a) type description.

3 Malcolm Rogers collected sherds from just 10 sites along a 175-km stretch of the lower Gila River: A-51 to A-55, A-60 to A-63, and A-113. While Waters’ map shows 11 sites along the river (Waters 1982c, Figure H.1), it misplots A-134 (“Esquina de las Cuevas”), which is actually located in the Tank Mountains approximately 25 km north of the river valley. Waters’ (1982c, Table H.1) reporting on Rogers’ collection provides typological information on 431 sherds of Lower Colorado Buff Ware from nine of those sites (his table omits data from A-62). Rogers’ (1945c) unpublished report on his entire collection from approximately 220 sites tallies 11,529 sherds of provisional types that are now recognized as Lower Colorado Buff Ware. Of those, his tables list only 476 sherds from the 10 sites in question. Thus, material from the lower Gila constitutes less than five percent of his entire collection, whether that is by the number of sites or the number of sherds.

4 Rogers carried out much of his research while employed by the Museum of Man (now the Museum of Us). During World War II, museum staff placed its exhibits and collections in storage while the U.S. Navy used the facility as a hospital. While Rogers’ collections and many of his records survived the ordeal and are still curated at the museum, some have claimed that Rogers’ elusive final report on Yuman ceramics disappeared during that episode.

5 While Malcolm Rogers did not attend the 1927 Pecos Conference, several of his friends, colleagues, and employers did, including Odd Halseth, Charles Amsden, Edgar Hewett, Emil Haury, and Jesse Nusbaum. Around that time, Rogers worked with the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff and the Arizona Museum in Phoenix, and he held membership in the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There is no doubt that Rogers’ early work in the Southwest significantly influenced his methods, as thoroughly investigated by Hanna (1982), and his employment of the binomial ware nomenclature developed at the Pecos Conference in his working typology (Table 1) is clear evidence of this.

6 In fact, based on the timing of the inception of pottery in different localities known during his time, Schroeder (1960, 1981, 1982; see also Euler 1982) contended that pottery technology diffused to Lowland Patayan communities from the Hohokam heartland in the middle Gila River valley in south-central Arizona. Rogers (1941, 1, 1945a, 181–182), however, rightly questioned such a proposition based on the lack of evidence and superficial assessments. As with nearly everything concerning Lowland Patayan pottery, the origin and spread of pottery technology and decorative qualities out of and into Lowland Patayan contexts is sorely understudied, and it is too premature to draw any certain conclusions.

Additional information

Funding

An earlier version of this article was funded under a contract from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Southwest Region, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Notes on contributors

Aaron M. Wright

Aaron Wright is a Preservation Anthropologist at Archaeology Southwest, where he leads the organization’s research, outreach, and conservation efforts along the lower Gila River in southwest Arizona. He earned a B.A. in anthropology from Ohio State University (1999) and an M.A. (2006) and Ph.D. (2011) in anthropology from Washington State University.