Mogollon: Introducing Prehistoric Cultural Groups

The Mogollon lived in the mountains and deserts of a vast area bounded to the north by the Little Colorado River in Arizona,  to the south by Chihuahua in Mexico, to the east by the Pecos River in New Mexico, and to the west by the Verde River in Arizona.  They were the first prehistoric culture of the Southwest to practice all of the things we associate with early pueblo peoples, such as cultivation of corn, the building of established villages, and the creation of pottery.  Though they eventually domesticated corn and squash, they came from a long tradition of hunting and gathering which remained a mainstay of their subsistence throughout their existence.       
 
The Mogollon culture spans a period starting around 200 B.C. and ending about 1450 A.D.  Interestingly enough, the Tularosa Cave Mogollon temporarily stopped their agricultural activities for 200 years (from 500-700 A.D.), then returned to farming with beans, squash and new strains of corn.  As agriculture became important to all Mogollon peoples, those living in the mountainous regions became extremely skilled at dealing with more variable and harsher growing conditions.  Though a few water control structures have been uncovered, they were not very sophisticated. 
 
As in the case of other neighboring cultures, the early Mogollon started out living in pithouses on hilltops and mesas.  Their pithouses had ramped  entryways, but other internal structures so consistently found in Anasazi pithouses were absent in those of the Mogollon, and their attention to detail in constructing these dwellings were also less exacting and more forgiving with respect to building around, and incorporating natural features (which may have been in the way) into, their buildings.  Their communal rooms were much larger than the typical kiva of other cultures.  Early Mogollon pottery was very plain, brownish/reddish, and roughly fashioned. 
 
More permanent villages first started being built in the river valleys where the best farmlands were located.  By this time (600 A.D.- 9th Century), gardening was combined with their usual hunting/gathering activities.  The Mogollon built many pithouse villages with a strong communal
emphasis, and water control works such as reservoirs, checkdams, terraced lands, even walk-in wells became evident at Point of Pines Pueblo located between the Black and Gila Rivers in southeast Arizona. 
 
The early 10th Century A.D. marked the beginning of a dramatic renaissance in Mogollon culture, architecturally and artistically.  Above-ground buildings first appear at Nantack Village, and after 900 A.D. stone (usually cobbles) started being used in these structures.  By the 12th Century A.D., a Mogollon style of masonry appears.  The 13th Century A.D. saw the construction of massive, several-hundred room pueblos at the Point of Pines pueblo, complete with plazas and gigantic communal structures which could accomodate up to several hundred people at one time.  At the height of its development, masonry resembled that of the Chaco Anasazi, with large, shaped sandstone slabs interspersed with smaller chinked slabs, though percentage-wise, the Mogollon may have preferred a higher ratio of large slabs to smaller ones in their walls.  The appearance of a northern species of squash as well as some D-shaped kivas suggest a very strong Anasazi influence after 1000 A.D.  There has even been some controversy as to which sites were Anasazi and which were Mogollon in that area. 
 
With architectural changes came notable chages in pottery, and an explosion of styles after the early, largely unadorned (except for some incising or occasional corrugation), very plain pottery representatives of 200 A.D.  For the next three hundred years after 300 A.D., a style termed Mogollon Red-on-Brown was very popular.  Three Circle Red-on-White style (red zig-zags, serrations and spirals painted on white-slipped pottery) occurs between 750 and 900 A.D.  From this style emerged the famous Classic Mimbres Black-on-White style of pottery.
 
In its infancy, Mimbres pottery designs are characterized by bold black features decorating the insides of bowls, with geometric patterns and scrolls being quite popular.  A second Mimbres style shows an increasing complexity of the early motifs described above, along with a greater preponderance of parallel lines surrounded by thicker lines.  Animal representations start to make an appearance at this time, developing into the third, most sophisticated, Mogollon style, Mibres Classic Black-on-White.  What is most striking about the Classic Mimbres is its variety of subject matter, including animals of vast variety, scenes of human performing everyday tasks, as well as mythical and legendary figures and gods.  This type of pottery appears to be a blending of Hohokam and Anasazi characteristics, as if the Mogollon adapted Hohokam designs to their own, but used clays and firing methods similar to those of the Anasazi.  Some Mimbres Classic Black-on-White pottery was traded, but most were prized and kept by the Mogollon, the finest examples of which appear to have been placed as grave offerings.  This style disappeared around 1100 A.D., right around the time when drought conditions placed strains on their ability to thrive as before, and social changes occurred which coincided with those taking place at Chaco Canyon between 1130 and 1150 A.D.
 
As the Sinagua were to the Hohokam and the Anasazi, the Mimbres Mogollon may well have been middlemen in a trade network between Mexico and the Chaco Anasazi.  There was a tremendous center of commerce at Casas Grandes in northern Chihuahua which expanded at this time, and may have even overtaken Chaco Canyon in these pursuits, absorbing  Mimbres culture.  By 1179 A.D., formerly Mimbres sites resembled Casas Grandes villages, from adobe architecture right down to pottery.  Or, the Mimbres may have relocated and the Casas Grandes peoples expanded geographically into Mimbres lands.   
 
The Gila Cliff Dwelling in New Mexico is one of the very last holdouts of Mogollon culture, spanning only 20 years of habitation, dating between 1270 and 1290 A.D.  During the 13th and 14th Centuries most Mogollon lived in central Arizona, and during the peak of the great drought (1276 - 1299 A.D.),  many native southwest peoples were migrating through and sharing Mogollon lands.
 
Mountainous regions provided better resources during this time and one such mountainous site, Casa Malpais (1265-1400 A.D.),  was another late settlement which the Zuni and some Hopi clans also claim as part of their ancestral culture.  Perhaps the most extensive late Mogollon settlement, west of Casa Malpais, was Grasshopper, built on the plateau of that name.  Grasshopper (1275-1300 A.D.) was the largest pueblo, containing some 500 rooms.  It may also have been organized into 4 social groups, based upon 4 distinct types of grave goods found there.  Mogollon dead were buried fully extended, face up, in the ground. 
 
Another drought between 1325 and 1355 A.D. probably marked the beginning of the end of Mogollon culture, as its peoples left the mountains for good by 1400 A.D., most likely merging with other pueblo people to the north such as the Zuni and the Hopi. 
 
Other characteristics of  Mogollon culture, distinct from neighboring cultures of their time, were their rectangular (rather than round) and much larger communal/ceremonial structures, as well as their grooved axes, and their practice of placing their infants on flat cradleboards which deformed the backs of their heads.