The Mogollon Culture
The Mogollon culture appears to have developed from an
earlier culture, the Cochise, an archaic culture of small nomadic
hunting and gathering bands who lived in the mountainous parts of
the Southwestern United States. The introduction of pottery, probably
from the south, marked the beginnings of the culture we call
Mogollon. The Mogollon lived in the mountainous region of eastern
Arizona and western New Mexico from about 200 B.C. to 1450 A.D.
The Mogollon culture was named by University of Arizona
archaeologist Emil Haury after the Mogollon Mountain area of New
Mexico. This group of people first lived in pithouses and made a plain
brown pottery.
www.statemuseum.arizona.edu
Map of Prehistoric Southwestern Cultures
The type and density of Mogollon houses and villages changed
over time, but they always appeared to value a shared community
life. The earliest Mogollon villages were groups of several pithouses.
Early Mogollon pithouses were quite deep and usually round or oval.
Pithouses are houses dug into the ground surface with stick and
thatch roofs supported by posts and beams and plastered on the
outside with dirt and clay. Some early Mogollon sites had a pit house
that was three times larger than the others in the village.
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The Mogollon Culture
Archaeologists believe this was the beginning of communal rooms
sometimes called kivas, found in many later Mogollon villages and
sites.
Pit homes gradually became more elaborate and rectangular in
shape. Villages at first were on hilltops or mesas near the river
valleys, possibly because they were easier to defend. Later, larger
villages were located near rivers which put them closer to their
gardens. Although the people grew corn, beans, and squash, they
were also hunters and gatherers.
Hunting parties, armed with the traditional spears and atlatls
(spear-throwers) in the earliest centuries and with bows and arrows in
the later centuries, killed mule deer and wild turkeys in the mountains.
They trapped muskrat and beaver along the streams and hunted
jackrabbits in the desert basins.
www.avim.parks.ca.gov/
Drawing of an atlatl used to throw a spear.
Gathering parties, carrying their baskets, climbed the
mountains to harvest wild fruits and seeds. Preserved pinyon pine
nuts, walnuts, acorns, prickly pear, wolfberry, sunflower seeds,
goosefoot, juniper berries, mariposa bulbs, and canyon grapes have
been found at Mogollon sites.
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The Mogollon Culture
Mogollon pottery was made of iron-rich volcanic clays, which
almost always fired to a dark brown color. Vessels were at first
unpainted and decorated only with tooled grooves. Then the brown
pottery was decorated with broad red lines. Later, pottery was made
from white clay and painted with red geometric designs.
www.statemuseum.arizona.edu
Mogollon brown pottery
A typical family’s household possessions probably would have
included plain brown or reddish ceramic bowls, pots, jars and other
vessels; yucca - woven baskets; grinding and crushing stones; reed
or straw mats; and fur blankets. Individual possessions could include
clothing made from animal skins or plant fibers and jewelry made
from shell, bone or semi-precious stones. The Mogollon used bone
and stone tools such as awls, needles, projectile points, drills, knives,
choppers, axes, and atlatls.
After the year 900 A.D., several changes occurred in the
Mogollon culture. Archaeologists believe that the Ancestral Pueblo
(Anasazi) culture absorbed much of the Mogollon culture, perhaps as
a result of migration. With influence from the north and an increase
in population, the Mogollon began to give up their traditional
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The Mogollon Culture
pithouses and started to build communities of above-ground pueblos
like the Ancestral Puelblo (Anasazi). They were usually one- or twostory clusters of rooms, often with common walls. They built small
villages with four to six rooms in a straight line or in a square. In a few
instances, they built large pueblos with 500 or more rooms which
faced an open plaza. Some Mogollon groups resided in cliff dwellings
during the 13th and 14th centuries. Another change was that their redon-white pottery design changed into the style for which the Mogollon
are most famous: the black-on-white Mimbres pottery.
www.statemuseum.arizona.edu
Mimbres black-on-white pottery
Ironically, for reasons which archaeologists do not know, the
rise of Mogollon pueblo communities marked the beginning of the end
of the culture. Archaeologists believe that the cause might have been
drought, overuse of resources, warfare, disease, or some
combination of those events. Whatever the reason, the western
Mogollon peoples began abandoning their communities in several
areas in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico early in
the 12th century. Some were able to stay until the early 1400s. The
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exact reasons for the abandonment and the destinations of the
Mogollon remain a mystery in southwestern archaeology.
travel.howstuffworks.com
Mogollon Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico
Adapted from:
Rose Houk. Mogollon. Southwest Parks and Monuments Association. 1992.
Tucson, AZ. ISBN 1-877856-11-8
http://www.beloit.edu/~museum/logan/southwest/mogollon/introduction.htm
http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/ind_new/ind6.html
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/northamerica/culture/s.w.uscultures/m
ogollon.html
Standards Connections: Grade 6
Social Studies: Strand 1 Concept 2 PO 3
Reading: Strand 1 Concept 4, Strand 3 Concept 1
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The Mogollon Culture