San Juan Red Ware, Changing Social Ties and the Role of Chac

These sherds came from the floor fill overlaying Floor 1 on Pueblo H, Room 1, Champagne Spring Ruins (5DL2333) South Ridge. Dating is based on accepted date ranges for the two types (Ortman et al. 2005:5-20) and adjusted based on the other diagnostic ceramics found in the layer, which includes Mancos Gray, Mancos Corrugated and Mancos Black-on-White.

All of these sherds are slipped, suggesting that the Bluff Black-on-Red is late, 9th or 10th century CE. The center and upper left sherds are Deadmans Black-on-Red, based on the deep red coloration of the slip (Ortman et al. 2005:5-21), while the three on the right are Bluff Black-on-Red, defined by the presence of a thin, orange-red slip and Bluff-style painted designs (Ortman et al. 2005:5-20). The central Deadmans Black-on-Red sherd has enough painted design present to recognize the Deadmans Style, which also occurs on Medicine Black-on-Red and Tusayan Black-on-Red, two Tsegi Orange Ware types produced beginning around CE 1040/1045 in the Kayenta region to the south of the Northern San Juan. Despite persisting in the Northern San Juan until CE 1100 (Ortman et al. 2004:5-20), Deadmans Black-on-Red is mostly absent from the Kayenta region in both imported and local forms by CE 1040 (Christenson 1994). The later Northern San Juan Deadmans Black-on-Red also occurs in Dogoszhi-style.(Ortman et al. 2005:5-21) as does Tusayan Black-on-Red demonstrating a shared style at the time.

There is evidence that in Pueblo I and Pueblo II, specialists residing in a few settlements in southeast Utah provide most of the red ware ceramics across the northern Colorado Plateau (Hegmon, Hurst and Allison 1995). This system seems to have been in decline by middle Pueblo II, around roughly CE 1040. This was a time when elements of the Chaco Regional System, either reflecting the creep of the Chaco State or local adoption of its hierarchies, tribute practices and Great Houses begins to appear across the Northern San Juan, including the areas of San Juan Red Ware production. This may have circumscribed who these communities could exchange with, limiting such relations to the Chaco system. This system included many long-time trading partners across the Montezuma Valley, Dolores Canyon and Northern San Juan uplands, including sites such as Mitchell Springs, Escalante Pueblo, the Lowry Community and Edge of the Cedars.

It notably excluded, or was excluded by, the people archaeologists call Kayenta, living to the south and west on Black Mesa and around Tsegi Canyon. Artists in these areas may have adopted local production of red ware to fill the loss or perhaps potters from the Northern San Juan who did not wish to live under the Chaco system moved to Kayenta settlements and began to produce pottery with local materials and Homeland methods, resulting in the rock tempered Middleton Black-on-Red, a Tsegi Orange Ware distinct from Tusayan Black-on-Red only in temper. Crushed rock was the dominant temper of San Juan Red Ware throughout the sequence. The early sand-and-sherd tempered Tsegi Orange Ware may represent Kayenta production using shared design canons also common to Tusayan White Ware, or eventual adoption of local temper technology by people with ancestry in the Northern San Juan.

Given the long term shared social ties, it is likely any migrants saw themselves as belonging to the same people as the Kayenta, despite living in an area archaeologists define as distinct based on ceramic technology and vernacular architecture. It must be stressed however that prior to Chaco most regions of the Ancestral Pueblo world are quite similar in village layout, village location and artistic styles. Given the close proximity of the two sub-cultures, they likely shared a close bond and did not view themselves as distinctly as archaeologists view them.

Around this time San Juan Red Ware also ceases to be common in Hohokam sites. While it remains an import until CE 1100, there appears to be a drop in frequency, suggesting it was not only the Chaco-rejecting Kayenta Ancestral Pueblo peoples, but also the Hohokam of the Sonoran Desert, who saw social and trade ties circumscribed by Chaco.

References Cited

Christenson, Andrew
1994 A Test of Mean Ceramic Dating Using Well-Dated Kayenta-Anasazi Sites. Kiva 59(3):297-317.

Hegmon, Michelle, Winston Hurst and James R. Allison
1995 Production for Local Consumption and Exchange: Comparisons of Early Red and White Ware Ceramics in the San Juan Region. In Ceramic Production in the American Southwest, edited by Patrica L. Crown and Barbara J. Mills, pp. 30-62. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Ortman, Scott G., Erin L. Baxter, Carole L. Graham, G. Robin Lyle, Lew W. Matis,
Jamie A. Merewether, R. David Satterwhite and Jonathan D. Till
2005 The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center Laboratory Manual, Version 1. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, CO.