In cultural terms, the Southwest has never been satisfactorily defined. This is particularly true of the southern boundaries. Archeologists usually include the territory occupied by the groups we term Anasazi, Hohokam, Mogollon, and Patayan; it is this area that will be considered here.

Physiographically (Atwood 191+0; Darton 1925; Fenneman 1931), the northern and eastern parts of this area belong primarily to the Colorado Plateaus Province; the southern and western parts comprise a portion of the Basin and Range Province. Physiographers subdivide these major provinces into lesser units having more significance for the archeologist. The Colorado Plateaus Province is marked primarily by high mesas and plateaus underlain by nearly horizontal strata of strong, cliff-producing rocks locally covered by volcanic features or domed by igneous intrusions. This extensive area is drained largely by the Colorado River and its tributaries. Among the distinguishing features are the hundreds of deeply entrenched canyons and great retreating cliffs or escarpments.

Before 1933, a number of sites had been dug in the area including the drainage of the upper Gila, the San Francisco, and the Mimbres rivers. Most of these were late Pueblo sites. Customarily they were thought to represent a regional variant of the culture now called Anasazi. A few investigators, however, suspected that these remains might have had a separate origin. In 1933, Haury excavated Mogollon Village for Gila Pueblo, and the following summer, Harris Village. These were published in 1936 (Haury 1936a and 1936b). For the first time there appeared a clear statement of se'quent phases in the area. But equally important was the resultant hypothesis that these cultural remains were not a regional variation of Anasazi but, instead, represented a hitherto unrecognized group.

The first Mogollon branch defined was the Mimbres. Here, sites have been excavated in the southern part of the Mimbres drainage and in the adjacent part of the Gila drainage.

Harris Village (Haury 1936b) is located about a quarter of a mile east of the Mimbres, New Mexico post office, on a large, flat terrace which rises abruptly some 20 m. above the east bank of the Mimbres River. It is about 1,850 m. above sea level. The village occupied several acres, part of which was not explored. Easily approached from all sides, defense does not seem to have been a factor in selecting the village site. The surrounding countryside is rugged and hilly, but agricultural land is available in small fields along the stream. The area is in the lower part of the pinyon-juniper belt, and a few trees occur on the site. Cottonwood, poplar, and walnut grow along the valley.

Having briefly considered the location, environment, and layout of the various Mogollon villages, we may now analyze them to determine whether or not they follow a pattern.

In their choice of village sites, it is clear that, with few exceptions, the Mogollon chose places of some elevation and isolation. Twelve of 2I4. villages were located on a mesa, a bluff, or a ridge; 10 others occupied terraces well above valley bottoms; and one was situated on the outwash fan of nearby mountains. Only one was located in a valley bottom. Furthermore, Danson. (1952) found in his survey that the early people built their villages on mesas or isolated ridges well back from the main stream of travel. Without exception, sites were located in mountainous country or near to mountains. Whether by preference or for some other reason, it was in the mountain country that the Mogollon people had their ecological niche. Many sites lie in secluded valleys on tributary streams; but except, perhaps, in the northernmost sites, the availability of agricultural land seems to have been one of the deciding factors in selecting a village site.

Somewhat more than 221 burials have been recovered from Mogollon sites which can be assigned to the periods covered by this study. The precise number cannot be given, nor is it important other than as an index to the validity of our reconstruction of the burial customs represented.

Burials of Mogollon 1 have been found at Cave Creek, Chiricahua:3:25, San Simon, SU, Bluff, Crooked Ridge Village, and Tularosa Cave. At Cave Creek two burials, flexed on the side, occurred in pits cut through the floor of an abandoned pithouse; a third, that of an infant, came from a shallow pit outside the house. Two additional burials, an infant and an adult, were placed in shallow depressions in the silt at Chiricahua:3:25. None of these burials, all Penasco Phase, contained grave furniture. Numerical data are not available on Penasco Phase burials at San Simon Village, but according to Sayles (1945:62-64) the body was commonly flexed on the side and placed in a pit sometimes cut through the house floor, but usually outside the house.

The Mogollon Culture begins with the addition of pottery to the last phase of the Cochise Culture. Pottery was the last distinctive element to be added, for architecture and agriculture had been a functioning part of the culture for perhaps a thousand years or more. There can be little doubt that pottery was introduced from outside the area, for the earliest ceramic complex appears as a thriving industry with well established techniques. Technically this pottery is well made, and although only a limited number of shapes occur, it is by no means primitive.

The main outline of Mogollon pottery development can be summarized briefly. The earliest horizon yet known contains polished brown and polished red wares. These wares, or variations of them, continue as basic wares of the ceramic complex throughout Mogollon history.

One of the principal characteristics of the Mogollon culture pattern is the relative abundance of ground and pecked stone artifacts, for the most part of a rather rough-and-ready nature. There can be little doubt that this is, in large measure, a heritage from their Cochise forebears, for often the same tool types are continued, almost without change, from preceramic into ceramic Mogollon horizons. Examples of such continuation are basin and slab metates and associated mano types, grinding slabs, pestles and boulder mortars, abrading stones, stone balls, and the universal hammer stones. Some of these artifacts are widespread in the Southwest in both time and space; others are specifically southern in their distribution. Data concerning the time and branch distribution of Mogollon ground stone artifacts are presented in Table 11 and Figure 8

Of the basic elements of the Mogollon subsistence pattern there can be little doubt. Hunting, gathering, and agriculture each played its part. However, the question of relative importance of each in the total pattern has never been satisfactorily answered. There is ample evidence that each was practised; but only for one small area do we have the quantitative data necessary to assess their status.

A rich fauna recovered at Harris and Mogollon villages led Haury to postulate heavy reliance on hunting as well as on agriculture (Haury 1936b:92-93). A similar situation prevailed at Forestdale Ruin during Mogollon 3, where the number of deer bones recovered makes it seem likely that as much reliance was placed on hunting as on agriculture (Haury 1941).

Martin and his associates (1950b:556-569) have essayed a most Interesting reconstruction of the social organization of the Mogollon Indians of Pine Lawn Valley. It is not my purpose here to criticize this attempt in toto, for I consider it valuable and stimulating, if not proven or provable; nor to offer an alternative reconstruction. However, from the point of view of the total Mogollon cultural pattern, I should like to point out certain discrepancies in the Martin hypothesis and to indicate another approach to the matter that has recently received some attention.

Having surveyed the cultural content of the sites called Mogollon by their excavators, and those obviously belonging to the same cultural expression, we may now ask whether there is, or was at any period, a pattern which may be recognized as a functioning cultural entity. This, of course, leaves aside the question of relationships with other cultural patterns, which does not affect the problem at hand. Table 16 brings together the culture elements which characterize the Mogollon Culture Pattern.

In the preceding part of this study I have tried to determine the functional trait constellation and cultural orientation of the Mog oil on people. In the following pages I shall attempt to trace the relationships of this group to other Southwestern groups, both prior and contemporaneous. In this paper I am not concerned with the relative taxonomic status of the various groups. Haury, Colton, Reed, Martin, Rinaldo, Nesbitt, Brew, and others have discussed various aspects of this problem at some length. Much of the Mogollon controversy has been philosophical and semantic in orientation and it does not seem necessary to review the various arguments here. Clearly there were temporal and cultural differences, as well as similarities, between these groups, and it is the examination of the nature and extent of these aspects that I propose.

It has been stated that with the addition of pottery the Cochise Culture became the Mogollon. The idea is not new. Although the first reports on the Mogollon (Gladwin 1934, 1935. 1936; Haury 1936b) visualized them as intruders into the Southwest from an eastern source, by 194-1 tn e idea was being expressed that there was a genetic connection between the prepottery Cochise and the later Mogollon. Haury (1941: 130) suggested that pottery, house building, earth burial, agriculture, and a few minor traits added to San Pedro Stage was the beginning of the Mogollon. Sayles (Sayles and Antevs 194-1:61) suggested that the introduction of pottery terminated the last stage of Cochise. McGregor (1941:189) also proposed this sequence. The excavation of Ventana Cave led Haury (1943) to suggest that Hohokam, as well as Mogollon, had its source in Cochise. In Ventana Cave Haury (1950) detailed the transition for the Hohokam.

Haury (1943, 1950) has demonstrated that Hohokam was an outgrowth of a western and slightly differentiated branch of San Pedro Stage, as Mogollon developed out of the eastern branch. Certain similarities in ceramic and lithic complexes of Mogollon and Hohokam in the earliest phases of each leave little doubt that there were close relationships at that time. Nevertheless, there existed technological differences in the pottery, and other differences, which require explanations before we can judge the nature of the relationships and whether or not more than a single source for pottery is indicated.

One of the chief problems confronting Southwestern archeologists today is the definition of relationships between the Anasazl and the Mogollon, for regardless of the position taken as to their taxonomic status, the fact that differences did exist in some degree demands investigation. Such investigation is by no means easy, because there are many similarities between the two groups. To understand these, it is necessary to control the relative chronology; and for this our evidence is poorest for the period most critical in the relationships, that is, prior to A. D. 600. Nevertheless, recent advances in our knowledge make such an attempt necessary.