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Show ture is and always has been the basis of all civilization, and here in America corn was the foundation upon which these later cultures were based. With the practice of agriculture, there arose an opportunity for group life, for the stimulation of mental activity by human contacts, with leisure for thought and invention. The art of making earthenware vessels, or pottery, was another addition, opening new opportunities for food preparation and storage, and providing a new outlet for aesthetic achievements. As a consequence of the grafting of these features, and others too, to the simple nomadic life of the native people, the stage was then set for the development of several unique American civilizations whose characteristics and interrelationships have occupied the time of most southwestern ar- cheologists up until now. On the Colorado Plateau arose the comparatively well- known Pueblo or Anasazi Culture, developing from the primitive Basketmaker and continuing through the historic period to the modern Pueblo. In the southern Arizona Desert, a quite distinct group known as the Hohokam was roughly contemporaneous with the Anasazi development. In the forested uplands between the plateau and the desert there was another basic culture, called Mogollon. Along the Lower Colorado River and in the western Arizona Desert there are sites, yet to be studied, of a little- known people designated as Patayan. And, although there is considerable overlapping of cultures in certain sections of the area, each of these basic cultures will be treated as a unit in the following discussion. ( Plate 14, in pocket.) Mogollon Culture.- In recent years, archeolo- gists working in east- central and southeastern Arizona and adjoining parts of New Mexico, principally in the Upper Gila River System, have recognized what they believe to be an ancient tribe which was culturally distinct from the already identified Anasazi and Hohokam. This tribe has been called the Mogollon Culture ( after the Mogollon Mountains and Plateau, which in turn were named for Don Juan Ignacio Flores de Mogollon, Captain General of New Mexico, 1712- 15). The traces of these people consist chiefly of loosely organized villages of semi- subterranean dwellings, better known as pit houses. These people practiced earth burial, were agricultural up to a point, and relied quite heavily upon hunting and natural foods. They produced brown and red pottery of simple form but were generally laggard in the development of arts and crafts. They were not, in any sense of the word, a spectacular people, but to the culture historian they nevertheless occupy a prominent position in southwestern prehistory. In the first place, there are reasons to believe that the Mogollon Culture is basically the connecting link between the pre- agricultural folk before the time of Christ and the later higher agriculturists. Early sites of the Mogollon Culture produce a number of stone implements which suggest a derivation from the latest stage of the Cochise Culture; or, expressed in another way, the chief difference between the two was the addition of pottery, agriculture, and perhaps a more formalized house type to the late Cochise complement of stone tools, to produce the oldest of several horizons of the Mogollon Culture. These new elements probably emanated from the south of Mexico, where native cultures were already somewhat farther along the road towards civilization. A newly excavated village of these people in the Forestdale Valley, just below the Mogollon Rim, south of Showlow, Ariz., has given us tree- ring dates at about 300 A. D. The significant feature here is the fact that the residents of this village had a little pottery of brown color while their contemporary Anasazi neighbors to the north seem to have had no pottery. This sheds some light on a much- disputed point in southwestern prehistory as to whether pottery was locally invented, by whom, and when. It begins to appear that these people were among the earliest to know the ceramic art, undoubtedly introduced from the south as already stated, and that they were party to passing it on to other southwestern people. The same may be true of agriculture, although here more evidence is needed. Thus, while not creators of culture, the Mogollon people certainly aided in the early diffusion of the elements mentioned. Another excavated early Mogollon site is on the San Francisco River in southwestern New Mexico; others in this general area are farther east outside the Colorado drainage. Their history is still far from complete, but we can say they did not achieve the illustrious heights of progress enjoyed by either the Hohokam or 83 |