The Provenance and Concentrated Production of Hohokam Red-on-Buff Pottery: Implications for an Ancient Arizona Economy

Abstract

Recent advancements in determining the production sources of prehistoric Hohokam pottery from the Phoenix basin, Arizona, have shown that ceramic manufacture was highly concentrated during the Sedentary period (ca. AD 950-1100). For example, nearly all of the bowls and small jars consumed in the lower Salt River valley were decorated red-on-buff pots imported from the middle Gila River valley to the south. An analysis of the sand temper in the buff wares showed that many, if not most, of these red-painted vessels were made in one locality along the Gila River, thereby supporting the idea that a reliable and efficient mechanism for commodity exchange was extant at that time, possibly in the form of periodic marketplaces associated with ritual ballgames. The pottery results imply a level of dependence on ballgame-related transactions that had not been recognized before, indicating their central importance to the Hohokam Sedentary period economy.