Bone tubes continued to be made, but they were plain and undecorated. Other bone artifacts include daggerlike objects with carved heads, which may have served as hair ornaments. Usually the carving represented the heads of mountain sheep or a bird-and-serpent motif.
It was in the Sedentary level at Snaketown that the first objects made of metal were found. These were little copper bells, pear-shaped and split at the bottom, which very much resemble sleigh-bells. A great many identical bells are found in Mexico and it seems probable that the Snaketown examples were imported from there.[59] In the Anasazi area many copper bells were imported from the south. Most of them are dated at between 1300 and 1400 A. D., although some have been found which were brought into Pueblo Bonito and Aztec at an earlier date.
THE CLASSIC HOHOKAM
The Classic period of the Hohokam, which lasted from about 1200 to 1400 A. D. or not long thereafter, was a remarkable era which has been referred to as “the Golden Age of southern Arizona”. As has been previously noted, however, Classic is hardly an accurate designation since we are no longer dealing with a pure Hohokam [culture]. It was during this time that Pueblo traits and, later, Pueblo people themselves entered the Hohokam homeland.
The newcomers, whose influence had been felt even before they themselves arrived, were a group known as the Salado people. The Saladoans are believed to have originated in the Little Colorado area, which they left to move farther south into the Tonto Basin around 1100 A. D.[56] About 1300 they again moved farther south and entered the domain of the Hohokam. They brought with them their own distinctive [culture] which differed in some ways from the classic Pueblo of the San Juan area and was far different from that of the Hohokam. They built thick-walled, multi-storied communal houses of adobe, in walled compounds. Their pottery included coiled and scraped polychrome wares in red, black, and white. They practiced inhumation, or burial of the dead.
Fig. 50—Salado polychrome ware. (Courtesy National Park Service.)
The coming together of the Salado people and the Hohokam is really remarkable. There is no evidence of an invasion nor of violence. Instead, these two culturally different people seem to have come together in a friendly manner and lived together in the same communities in peace and amity. Each group, to a great extent, clung to its own way of life, yet together they achieved a distinctive [culture]. It was during this period that the canal system reached its highest development. Doubtless the newcomers, who had had no real irrigation system before, contributed their labor to the common project of building and maintaining the canals which were built to serve their villages.
In the Hohokam [culture] proper there were certain changes. Pottery included plain buff ware and a pebble-polished bright red ware, usually in the form of bowls with black interiors, as well as the ubiquitous red-on-buff. In the latter, the red paint was thinner and less brilliantly colored than in earlier times. Jars and pitchers, the latter an innovation of this period, were the commonest forms. Jars with a capacity of over thirty gallons have been found. Painting was characterized by poor brush work. Most designs were rectilinear and practically no life-forms were used. A few figurines, representing both human beings and animals, have been found at Los Muertos, a Classic site, but they were too few to have been important in the culture. There is, of course, the possibility that some were made of perishable materials instead of clay and hence have not survived.
Most Salado pottery during this period was a polychrome ware with red, black, and white. Red was sometimes used as a decorative color, and sometimes formed a part of the background. Bowls and jars predominated, but ladles and mugs were also made, and there were some [effigy] vessels, usually in the form of birds. Some [corrugated pottery] was also made.