| OCR Text |
Show tecture was introduced and rectangular masonry houses were built, with associated masonry granaries. Extensive use was made of caves throughout the area, numerous masonry granaries and houses occurring in these caves. Corrugated pottery was also added to the complex and greater use made of more elaborately decorated black- on- white pottery. It is evident from the foregoing that, in general, this culture is largely a southern complex which has moved northward. However, it lacked such distinctive Anasazi traits as domesticated cotton, the loom, the domestication of the turkey, twilled ring baskets, grooved stone axes and mauls, and such pottery forms as canteens, pitchers, ladles, and highly decorated wares. In addition, a number of other elements point either to a considerable admixture of ideas and features from other neighboring areas or to purely local developments. These occur particularly in the Fremont River drainage west of the Colorado River and include such traits as black- on- grey pottery, highly ornamented clay figurines, a distinctive style of moccasin, and an abundance of elaborate petroglyphs. The petroglyphs represent one of the most striking and characteristic elements of the Northern Periphery, being found in profusion over the greater part of the area. Anthropomorphic figures are especially common, as well as large human figures with elaborate headdresses, geometric designs, deer, and mountain sheep. Many of these seem to have been derived from Basketmaker prototypes, as the triangular- bodied figures, but in this region the art has been greatly developed and elaborated over anything found to the south. Perhaps the highest development of the petroglyph art occurs in the western and northern sections of the area in the Uinta Basin and Nine Mile Canyon. Just what happened to this culture we do not know. About 1000 A. D., or shortly thereafter there was a gradual shrinking of the inhabited area, the northern sites being the first to be abandoned. The general lack of classic Pueblo materials demonstrates that this cultural occupation came to an end before the period of highest development in the San Juan region. The strategic location of many sites in the Northern Periphery, such as forts, suggests that these people were subjected to pressure, possibly by hostile nomadic groups, at a relatively Figure 50.- Modern Indian Zuni Pueblo, N. Mex. 98 |
