These particular sherds are really neat because they depict people, can you make them out? These were likely manufactured near where the I-10 crossed the Gila River south of Phoenix around A.D. This is a group shot of red-on-buff sherds that were recovered from a 2012 project in the vicinity of 16 th Street and Roosevelt St. Red-on-buff sherds from south Central Phoenix Looking at the manufacturing techniques and painted designs of red-on-buff ceramics, archaeologists can estimate when that pot was created and through that information I can surmise the time period of the deposit from which it was recovered. Researchers were then able to look at the individual motifs present within the designs that were in use during these different time periods, and track how they changed over the entire sequence and region. Since a particular style would be associated with certain levels within a given deposit, archaeologists were able to date that deposit relatively accurately using a highly advanced techniques such as radiocarbon dating. This is known as the Law of Superimposition. Initially the earliest archaeologists knew which design styles came before which, based on the fundamental archaeological principal that artifacts found in the lowest levels of a deposit were deposited before the items which were recovered above them. Archaeologists figured out that the designs in some cases are so specific, that the time period for these designs can be reconciled to within a 50 year period! They did this by refining the chronology over time.
Hohokam pottery designs series#
The well-documented series of developments leading up to the creation and the changes in the designs after, provide a baseline for archaeologists to reckon changes in the archaeological record. The images that were painted upon what archaeologists call red-on-buff pottery conveyed ideas that hinted at the things and ideas that were important to the people who created them. There had been pots decorated similarly for centuries at that point, but these pots were special. Archaeologists generally call these pots red-on-buff ceramics. 750, potters in villages near where the I-10 Freeway crosses the Gila River south of the Phoenix Metro Area, perfected the recipe for a pottery that fired a pink buff color, which they complimented with maroon painted designs. This is most often related to the style of the pottery. Most importantly, ceramics can convey information about chronology, which refers to the timeframe in which the ceramics were used. So what can we say about these numerous bits of ancient pots, and what conclusions can we draw about the people who created them? These deposits can be so large that often when archaeologists excavate portions of these villages, potsherds are the most prolific artifacts recovered and can number in the hundreds of thousands. Some of these villages lasted for a thousand years, and this resulted in the presence of huge deposits of potsherds. This is derived through the idea that people didn’t eat their dinner out of huge storage jars, and likewise, a shallow bowl wasn’t a sufficient container to store a field’s harvest. This information provides clues about what kind of activities took place within a site because container form implies container function.
The broken pieces of these containers are known as potsherds, or just sherds, and their form can convey what kind of container they were a part of, such as a bowl or a jar. Over time the repertoire of container shapes increased in lockstep with the rise of villages and a proportionately increased reliance on irrigation-based agriculture. The first ceramic containers in the Phoenix Basin were what archaeologists call “seed jars,” which ceramicists surmise were created to provide a rodent-proof container in which to store the next year’s planting seed. First, it is necessary to set the stage by giving a brief history of pottery in the Phoenix Basin.Ĭeramic technology reached the Phoenix Basin, probably from Mexico, around 2,000 years ago, although there is evidence from the Tucson area that it reached the greater region much earlier. Archaeologists who study ceramics believe that the increased use of ceramic containers over time was connected to an increased reliance on farming and the more sedentary lifestyle that resulted from it. Share a little about what ceramic analysts do, and what broken bits of pottery can tell us about Phoenix’s First Farmers, whom archaeologists call the Hohokam. Hi readers! It’s your friendly neighborhood ceramic analyst David here to
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