The Mongollon: The Southwest’s First Pottery Makers

Episode 15: The Mongollon Cuture

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)

Film Review

The Mongollon thrived from 2100 BC to 1450 AD in southern New Mexico and Arizona, Northern Sonora and Chihuahua, and Western Texas. They’re best known for their Mimbres Valley pottery (dating from 900 AD), painted with stylized animal and human figures and for burying their dead in a flexed seated position with a bowl on their head. The presence of fish bones and shells among their remains suggests they traded with coastal cultures.

They were the first in the Southwest to make pottery, using an advanced coil technique they most likely learned from Mexican trading partners. Most bowls, along with some pitchers, were used for food storage.

Round Mongollon pit houses date from 2100 BC, when their owners were first experimenting with growing corn. By 200 – 500 AD, they relied mainly on corn for food, although they were still gathering Napalese and prickly pear cactus and snaring rabbits with woven nets. Around 500 AD, their pit houses changed from round to rectangular, they were living in villages of rectangular pit houses and they they were building started building underground rectangular kivas for religious purposes.

By 500 AD the Mongollon had widely adopted the bow and arrow and were hunting dear.

Around 900 AD, Increased rainfall resulted in larger corn harvests and populations. The Mongollon began building new houses upland from the flood plain and adding on extra rooms for extended family members.They also began burning and rebuilding their stickand grass pit houses and kivas and rebuilding them from adobe or pueblo-style blocks.

With the arrival of a prolonged 12th century drought, the Mongollon once again burned their kivas and migrated to the northern Rio Grande valley in northern Arizona and Colorado. They would return to the desert 100 years later.

Sadado Polychrome pottery found in Kinishiba Ruins in eastern Arizona suggests some 13th century contact with Ancestral Pueblo peoples who had migrated south.

The 14th century town of Grasshopper, with a population of over 500 people, was occupied until 1450. Gila Cliff dwelling Mongollon built elaborate dwellings into the cliffs.

Film can be viewed with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5713021/5712768