Virtuoso Hohokam Flintknapping in the Gila Bend Region

Virtuoso Hohokam Flintknapping in the Gila Bend Region

R. Jane Sliva

The projectile points in the Norton Allen Collection are, quite simply, breathtaking. My fifteen years of work with archaeological assemblages from all regions of Arizona and countless hours of poring over pho-tographs of points in published reports were slim preparation for the sheer amazement I experienced upon viewing the collection in person. Every drawer sliding open, every box and box peeked into, was a rev-elation. Points by the dozen, points by the hundreds, impossibly long, impossibly thin, impossibly intricate, impossibly voluminous, one after another after another. And beside those were the hundreds of broken, fire-warped, fire-shattered, and not-so-well executed examples that have not yet been highlighted in published photographs.

The terminology I use here is standard among Hohokam lithic ana-lysts. A spear point is a large point hafted on a thrusting or throwing spear, a dart point is a somewhat smaller point hafted on a dart thrown with an atlatl, and the terms arrowhead, arrowpoint, and projectile point generally refer to small points hafted on arrows for use with a bow. In this article, I use the last three terms interchangeably to refer to Hohokam-era arrowheads.

Norton’s projectile point collection is best known to most researchers through two commonly reproduced photographs of showpiece arrow-heads that Norton had placed in Riker mounts (see Hoffman 1997:figs. 8.9, 8.10; Wasley and Johnson 1965:figs. 60, 78); these are reprised here in figure 1. The two point types, commonly referred to as Gatlin and Citrus Side-notched, are common in the collection but represent neither the stylistic variation nor the range of workmanship present in it. This article presents a wider view of the Norton Allen points themselves and explores some of the questions surrounding them, including the identity of the knapper or knappers responsible for the most elaborate

R. Jane Sliva is the senior lithic analyst at Desert Archaeology, Inc., in Tucson, Arizona.

Journal of the Southwest 52, 2 (Summer 2010) : 000–000

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2 ✜ Journal of the Southwest

specimens, the source of the chert used, and the social factors implied in the use of the points in mortuary contexts in the Gila Bend area.

the Points

Any discussion of the Norton Allen points naturally begins with the numerous and striking Gatlin and Citrus points (figure 1). Gatlin points are side-notched triangular points with elongated, finely serrated blades, horizontally oriented deep side notches that range from U-shaped to soft V-shaped, squared shoulders, deep basal indentations forming pro-nounced ears, and sharp junctures between the basal and lateral edges of the ears. These points tend to be quite thin relative to their length, and in the best examples are uniformly flaked to create a consistent cross-section through the length of the blade, often not exceeding 4 mm in thick-ness (see Hoffman 1997:214–18; also see Justice 2002:307–9, despite the error in ascribed dates). All are made of cryptocrystalline silicates, primarily chalcedony or chert; because most of the Gatlin points in the collection came from cremations, their intensely burned state prevents a more detailed identification of the materials used or their origins.

The most outstanding examples of the Gatlin style in the Allen collec-tion were included as mortuary offerings in cremations at the Gatlin and Four Mile sites, including several points exceeding 8 cm in length and a few exceeding 10 cm (figures 2 and 3). Producing such points required an extremely high level of knapping skill as well as access to large quantities of large pieces of high-quality raw material, factors that equate to substantial investments of resources and time that would have given the finished pieces enormous value. Outside the Gila Bend area, the Gatlin style has been reported from sites in the Lower Salt and Middle Gila areas, though the greatest number by far were recovered from the Gatlin Site itself (Hoffman 1997:table 8.24), making it likely that the site is either where the style originated or rapidly became the center of its manufacture.

The Gatlin specimens that Norton selected for his display mounts represent the apex of craftsmanship, but the existence of many other examples of this style from the Gila Bend sites—exhibiting a range of workmanship quality—indicates that, while the design was clearly valued for inclusion as a mortuary offering, the production of Gatlin points was not monopolized by a single knapper. The Four Mile Site examples show fine workmanship but also a slight deviation from the proportions of the

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Figure 1. The classic display-case photos most frequently used when referencing the Norton Allen projectile points. Top: selected Gatlin points from a cremation at the Gatlin Site. Bottom: Citrus Side-notched points from a shell cache at the Citrus Site. (Reproduced from Wasley and Johnson 1965:figs. 60 and 78)

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Figure 2. Finely executed Gatlin points from the Gatlin Site, selected to show details of manufacture. Top row: Copper Bell burial; bottom row: cremation southwest of main platform mound (from the display mount shown in figure 1).

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Figure 3. Finely executed Gatlin points from other Gila Bend sites, selected to show details of manufacture. Top row: leftmost two from the Four Mile Site, rightmost three from the Twelve Mile Site; bottom row: all five from the Four Mile Site.

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basal elements present at the Gatlin Site; Gatlin points from the Four Mile Site tend to have deeper, more open notches and slightly longer basal edges between the bottom of the notch and the corner; these are idiosyncratic traces that point to different motor habits and, thus, dif-ferent knappers. This variation is even more strongly illustrated by other Gatlin points in the collection that retain—sometimes only at the outer limits of acceptable variation—the required set of design attributes for Gatlin points, but were not executed with a consistent level of precision (figure 4). While imperfect by most aesthetic measures, their importance for understanding Gila Bend Hohokam mortuary practices should not be underestimated, as they illustrate the broader cultural importance of the Gatlin design beyond the interments of one or two individuals. The design’s primacy might be best illustrated by a small point from the Three Mile Site that has the requisite Gatlin side notches, basal indentation, and proportions among blade and stem size, but was carved from bone rather than flaked from stone (see figure 4, top leftmost point).

It is also important to note that although Gatlin is a distinctive design, it is also a clearly recognizable derivation of or variation on a common Sedentary Period side-notched, concave-based template that is known from widespread areas of Arizona. So, rather than represent-ing an entirely unique invention, Gatlin points may best be viewed as an individual artist’s interpretation of a theme that would have been familiar to the people living at the time, a variation whose desirability and rise in regional popularity—as indicated by presence of substandard copies at the Gatlin Site and particularly at other Gila Bend sites—was likely directly tied to the master craftsmanship that was discernible in the originating knapper’s work.

Citrus (or Citrus Side-notched) points are side-notched and triangular, with elongated, concave-edged blades, but very narrow, shallow notches oriented generally horizontally, slightly to markedly concave unserrated blade edges, square shoulders, and sharply defined junctures between the basal and lateral edges of the stem (see Hoffman 1997:221–23; also Justice 2002:309–10, again disregarding dating). The Citrus points in the Allen collection are almost absurdly thin, with many specimens not exceeding 2 mm in thickness. The points average 4 cm in length, but several considerably longer specimens are present, with concave-edged blades that taper dramatically to almost a needle point. All are made from cryptocrystalline materials, and although many are burned, chert appears to have been chosen overwhelmingly for their manufacture (figure 5).

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Figure 4. Gatlin points from various Gila Bend sites, selected to show the range of manufacturing skill evident in the collection. Top row: left three from Three Mile Site (leftmost is carved from bone), second from right from Twelve Mile Site, rightmost from Gatlin Site; bottom row: Four Mile Site.

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Citrus points are most common at the Citrus Site and were thus most likely primarily manufactured there, though a number of other sites are represented among the Citrus points in the Allen collection. Citrus points recovered away from the presumed source site do not exhibit as much variation as the Gatlin points in execution or flaking quality, and may represent direct procurement of finished points more than copycat knapping by the residents of these sites. Like Gatlin points, Citrus points are clearly derived from a general and widespread Sedentary Period tem-plate for unserrated triangular points with deep, narrow side notches; figure 6 illustrates the morphological continuum evident in the basic point design.

Figure 5. Citrus Side-notched points from the Citrus Site, selected to show details of manufacture.

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Figure 6. Citrus and other side-notched points from various Gila Bend and Lower Salt sites, selected to show the range of manufacturing skill evident in the collection. Top row: Three Mile Site; middle row: Buckeye; bottom row: left two from Gatlin Site, right two from Nichols Ranch Site.

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While Citrus and Gatlin points are the best-known types from the collection, several other Sedentary Period styles account for a significant portion of the points. A number of typologies have been constructed for Hohokam projectile points (Hoffman 1997; Justice 2002; Loendorf and Rice 2004; Sliva 2006), with varying degrees of overlap in type defini-tions from system to system but very little overlap in terminology. The “other” styles include several variations on side-notched and unnotched triangular points (figures 7 and 8). Differences in relative blade length and width, notch placement and depth, presence or absence of serrations or barbs, and basal shape are the key attributes considered together as suites determining point identification under the different typological systems. The quality of workmanship in these other points is variable, and while none quite approach the level of mastery seen in the best Gatlin and Citrus examples, they remain important for understanding the scope of Hohokam mortuary practices reflected in the collection.

Charles Marshall Hoffman (1997) argues that Hohokam points were divided between utilitarian (hunting and warfare) and decorative (ritual and adornment) styles, with the various types shown in figures 7 and 8 falling into the first category and representing different technological traditions among the Gila Bend, Lower Salt, and Middle Gila regions of the Hohokam. Yet despite this distinction, the majority of the “utili-tarian” points in the Allen collection were recovered from mortuary contexts, indicating that the boundary between the mundane and the ceremonial was not rigid. It is also interesting to note that unusually long, thin, masterfully flaked Sedentary Period side-notched points have been found in the undeniably functional context of an individual’s rib cage (Sliva 2002:518; fig. 9.1q), indicating that the crossover between the utilitarian and ritual spheres occurred in both directions.

the raw Materials

Where did the chalcedony and chert used for the Gatlin and Citrus points come from? No sources have been definitively located (Doyel 1996:54; Wasley and Johnson 1965:100). Efforts to identify the source of the cherts used for the points are hampered by two obstacles: the severely burned condition of nearly all the points in the sample, and the lack of reliable, uncontaminated chemical signatures—necessary for confident sourcing—in most of the known chert sources in Arizona (Shackley

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Virtuoso Hohokam Flintknapping ✜ 11

2007). The far-ranging trade networks that funneled various nonlocal goods through the Gatlin Site (Doyel 1996:54–55) demonstrate that these cherts could have come from sources areas virtually anywhere between the Four Corners area and Mesoamerica.

Hoffman notes that the closest chert and chalcedony outcrops to Gila Bend are located in the Harquahala, Eagle Tail, and Harcuvar Mountains of west-central Arizona (Hoffman 1997:69), and that many Citrus points are made of a reddish brown chert that is similar to materials in the Den-

Figure 7. Serrated points from various sites in the Gila Bend area. Top row: left two from Homestead Site, rightmost seven from Three Mile Site; middle row: left-most four from Three Mile Site, rightmost from Buckeye; bottom row: leftmost four from La Escuela, rightmost two from Buckeye.

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dora Valley, west of Painted Rock Reservoir, though this is a purely visual assessment that is complicated by the burned condition of most of the specimens (Hoffman 1997:221). The large nodules of high-quality material required for the production of the largest Gatlin points likely had to be procured from distant sources, such as the Redwall Limestone formation in the Mogollon Rim area of east-central Arizona (Hoffman 1997:70). Obsidian sourcing data indicate that long-distance exchange relationships for arrowpoint raw materials had been firmly established by the Sedentary Period (Shackley 1988, 1996), meaning that the social mechanisms for procuring distant cryptocrystallines would have been solidly in place.

The Mogollon Rim is a particularly intriguing possible source area. Recent work at Ponderosa Campground, a Central Arizona Tradition site east of Payson, dating to the equivalent of the Sedentary Period (ad 900–1100) and situated directly on one significant chert source and near several others, has revealed evidence of a considerable projectile point and preform manufacturing industry (Sliva 2010). Stylistic matches between points found at Ponderosa Campground and those recovered from sites in other regions—particularly in chert-poor areas such as the Lower Salt and Middle Gila, and including points that vaguely resemble Gatlins—raises an enticing possibility that points and preforms made along the Mogollon Rim were exported to outside areas in a highly organized, high-volume exchange system. No preforms or finished points recovered along the rim approach the size of the large Gatlin points at Gila Bend, but it is possible that unreduced nodules of Mogollon Rim chert moved into the area as a trade commodity.

Figure 8. Unserrated obsidian points from various Gila Bend sites. Top row: Copper Bell burial, Gatlin Site; bottom row: Four Mile Site.

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Beautiful things, necessary things: elaBorate arrowheads and Mortuary Practices

The Allen Collection is stunning for the symmetry and balance of intri-cately flaked points, the color and purity of the (unburned) stone from which they were made, the breathtaking technical prowess and precision required to finish a 10 cm point that is only 3 mm thick without snapping it, and the awesome trade investment represented by a piece of stone that may have been procured from hundreds of miles away over difficult terrain with neither wheels nor draft animals. Such a great investment of labor was undertaken in response to the universal human drive to send the deceased on their way with some material token signifying the importance of their lives.

Arrowheads of nearly every prominent Phoenix-area Hohokam style were placed in cremations. The inclusion of large numbers of elaborate points—almost always in conjunction with other presumably high-value items such as copper bells and carved shell pendants—clearly signifies high social status and represents a considerable investment by the people who were charged with acquiring the mortuary offerings. The close similarities in the details of manufacture of grouped points from individual buri-als, coupled with the skill level necessary to make them, indicates that a single skilled knapper was probably responsible for the manufacture of each set. The largest, most elaborately and regularly flaked points were likely the work of one particularly skilled artisan.

Single mortuary features that display internal stylistic consistency and differ slightly but noticeably from groups recovered from other burials, particularly from burials in different sites, suggest the presence of a few different craft specialists, perhaps living in different villages, at different times, or with different social or exchange relationships. They may have worked independently or overseen workshops with carefully trained and controlled knappers turning out a consistent product. Whatever the specifics of the social mechanisms, it was important that the burials of certain individuals contained their work.

The presence of substandard Gatlin points in burials away from the Gatlin Site implies that the design was important, even if a master-level execution of it could not be obtained, perhaps because the deceased did not leave enough accumulated resources to exchange for elaborate renditions or was not part of the social network providing access to the master knapper’s products. In this case, the people furnishing the mortu-

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ary offerings would have been left to procure the best version they could afford or manufacture a copy themselves to the best of their abilities with whatever piece of chert was available to them—which perhaps explains the small “Gatlin point” carved in bone at the Three Mile Site and the undersized, irregularly flaked Gatlin points at the Four Mile Site.

Two gravestones in a small cemetery in the limestone country of southern Indiana—marking two boys who died at nine years old and some fifty years apart—are an unlikely but apt analogy (figure 9). Sur-rounded by quarries on three sides, Hopkins Cemetery, outside tiny Needmore, Indiana, is the final resting place for generations of people who worked at the center of an industry that employed both master craftsmen and unskilled laborers to produce high-demand items that were shipped throughout the United States. The dead needed certain things, culturally prescribed components of the mortuary ritual, and then—as at all times—the survivors were constrained by their ability to pay for the most desirable status items. In Gila Bend—another center of manufacturing specialists participating in a far-reaching exchange network—grieving relatives wanted chalcedony arrowpoints with long, serrated blades and matching side notches and basal indentations. In Needmore, they wanted a limestone grave marker inscribed with a name and dates, ideally with a bit of scripture and a decorative motif. Those who had the resources to acquire these things from a master craftsman got the long, thin arrowheads or the headstone carved in bas-relief with a lengthy Bible verse and topped with scrolls, birds, and ferns carved so intricately as to be identifiable to species. Those who did not were left to make their own uneven points with mismatched serrations and awkward humps, or to scratch a name into an unadorned slab with an unsteady hand, letters backwards and dates squeezed together, scrollwork and lifelike sculpture passed over in favor of a stick-figure sun.

The sheer number of chipped-stone masterpieces contained in the Allen Collection is unlikely ever to be matched in the archaeology of Arizona. Its true value, however, lies in its juxtaposition of the masterful and the mundane, showing the full range of artistry brought to bear on the treatment of the dead by the Hohokam of Gila Bend. ✜

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Figure 9. Grave markers from Hopkins Cemetery in Need-more, Indiana. Joseph Massey’s professionally carved stone (top) and Kenneth Dale Moffatt’s homemade stone (bottom). Both boys died at age nine; Moffatt’s stone reads “ASLEEP IN JESUS” with the “J” carved backwards.

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references

Doyel, David E.1996 Resource Mobilization and Hohokam Society: Analysis of Obsid-

ian Artifacts from the Gatlin Site, Arizona. Kiva 62(1):45–60.Hoffman, Charles Marshall1997 Alliance Formation and Social Interaction During the Sedentary

Period: A Stylistic Analysis of Hohokam Arrowpoints. PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe.

Justice, Noel D.2002 Stone Age Spear and Arrow Points of the Southwestern United

States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Loendorf, Chris, and Glen E. Rice2004 Projectile Point Typology, Gila River Indian Community, Ari-

zona. Anthropological Research Papers No. 2. Sacaton, Ariz.: Cultural Resource Management Program, Gila River Indian Community.

Shackley, M. Steven1988 Sources of Archaeological Obsidian in the Southwest: An Archae-

ological, Petrological, and Geochemical Study. American Antiq-uity 53(4):752–72.

1996 Sources of Archaeological Obsidian in the Greater American Southwest: An Update and Quantitative Analysis. American Antiquity 60(3):531–51.

2007 Personal communication.

Sliva, R. Jane2002 Temporal, Spatial, and Functional Variability in the Flaked Stone

Assemblage. In Tonto Creek Archaeological Project: Artifact and Environmental Analyses. Vol. 2, Stone Tool and Subsistence Studies, edited by Jeffrey J. Clark, pp. 487–558. Anthropological Papers 23. Tucson: Center for Desert Archaeology.

2006 Projectile Points in Regional Perspective. In Sunset Crater Archaeology: The History of a Volcanic Landscape. Stone, Shell, Bone, and Mortuary Analyses, edited by Mark D. Elson, pp. 31–63. Anthropological Papers 31. Tucson: Center for Desert Archaeology.

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2010 Little Green Valley Flaked Stone. In Their Own Road: Archaeologi-cal Investigations along State Route 260, Payson to Heber—Little Green Valley Section, edited by Sarah A. Herr. Technical Report No. 2009-01. Draft. Tucson: Desert Archaeology.

Wasley, William W., and Alfred E. Johnson1965 Salvage Archaeology in Painted Rocks Reservoir, Western Ari-

zona. Anthropological Papers 9. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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Virtuoso Hohokam Flintknapping in the Gila Bend Region

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