Salado: Introducing Prehistoric Cultural Groups

There is some controversy as to whether the Salado were a distinct cultural group, an offshoot of the Hohokam, or a blend of two cultures.  Their heartland comprised the Tonto Basin and the desert mountains around what are Globe and Miami (in Arizona) today.  This was also an overlapping area for the Anasazi from the north, the Mogollon from the east, and the Hohokam and Sinagua from the west.  Many undiscovered sites are believed to be underwater today, within the bounds of the Roosevelt Dam. 
 
The Salado were merchants and possibly warriors (due to evidence of signs of conflict).  They were split into two sub-groups:  those which lived in the uplands and largely harvested cacti fruit, and those who built their dwellings near their irrigated fields in the lowlands.  The upland people did not live there year-round.  Togetzoge, Besh-Ba-Gowah, Schoolhouse Point, Gila, and the Tonto National Monument's Upper and Lower Ruins are some of the better known Salado settlements. 
 
They were both farmers and hunter/gatherers and were probably the healthiest culture in the Southwest as their remains show no signs of nutritional deficiencies or metabolic stress.  The Salado were prolific weavers and produced everything from baskets, hairbrushes, and yucca sandals, to finely-woven textiles and attire of cotton, some plaid and some embroidered.
 
Their architecture can be described as a blend between the above-ground pueblos and connected room blocks of the Anasazi and the walled-in adobe/cobble structures (entrance vestibules included) and platform mound arrangements of the Hohokam.  Peculiarly, their rooms tended to be larger and have varying floor levels within each structure. 
 
The Salado are probably best known for their pottery styles:  the Pinto, the Gila and the Tonto.
 
Pinto Creek styles show up around 1275 A.D. and are characterized by bowls with white-slipped interiors painted with black designs, their exteriors are brown to bright red.  The black paint was made from boiled plant material. 
 
Gila pottery was the most widely spread style of prehistoric Southwestern pottery, and  was applied with heavier paint, the black paint of which was made from a mixture of minerals and plants.  It is in the Gila tradition where we see more complex , bolder and assymetrical motifs, particularly the feathered serpent.  Bowls are most common, but jars and effigies of birds are evident from this time.  Many Gila items are also marked with a broad band of paint around their rims which are almost always broken with a gap at some point - these are described as lifelines. 
 
Tonto styles occur around 1350 A.D. and later, and mostly comprise small bowls and jars plus some ollas, decorated with a twist on the Gila polychrome style.  In this case, black and white designs were sometimes painted on pot exteriors, and red could be painted over white slip and between the black portions of the designs.  Brushwork was bolder, and not quite as finely applied as that on Gila objects. 
 
The Salado culture did very well over a 300 year time period, peaking in the 14th Century.  There appear to be signs of conflict toward the end of this culture, and sites were abandoned between 1400 and 1450 A.D.  It is thought that remaining Salado peoples eventually assimilated into the Puebloan cultures which became the Hopi and Zuni of today.