Patayan Culture: a review of some literature

by Robert Weeks

Information about the prehistoric Patayan culture is scattered. Nothing exists comparable to Alfred V. Kidder’s classic but dated study of the Puebloan (An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology, Yale University Press, 1924), or to Emil Haury’s extensive study of the Hohokam (The Hohokam: Desert Farmers & Craftsmen: Snaketown 1964-1965, University of Arizona Press, 1976). It’s interesting to compare Haury’s perspective with Kidder’s; so much had been learned in the fifty-odd years between these works. But the study of Patayan culture has lagged far behind that of the other prehistoric Southwest cultures (Mogollon, Hohokam and Puebloan). Although the term “Patayan” was given official archaeological status at the Pecos Conference in 1957, the only book ever published with “Patayan” in the title was edited by McGuire and Schiffer (Hohokam and Patayan: Prehistory of Southwestern Arizona, Academic Press, 1982). The articles in this book were part of an extensive survey conducted for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on the physiography, ethnology, and archaeology of the region. It’s an informative, if somewhat disorganized academic tome, which the editors hoped would be “a well-thumbed reference for all persons – archaeologists and laymen – interested in the prehistory of the U.S. Southwest (including southeastern California).”

The Pataya (pronounced pah-tah-‘yah), or people of the Patayan culture, inhabited roughly the western third of Arizona and adjacent desert areas of southern Nevada, southern California, and northwestern Mexico. Malcolm J. Rogers, an early archaeologist working in the area, believed that pre-agrarian hunter-gatherers had slowly migrated from southern California into the lower Colorado River valley (“An Outline of Yuman Prehistory,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 1, no. 2, 1945). There they settled down, practiced flood-plain farming, and began making pottery. From his extensive collection of sherds Rogers developed a ceramic typology and proposed a chronology for this culture. He did not, however, call it “Patayan” but used the term “Yuman,” chiefly because the native inhabitants of most of western Arizona in historic times spoke (and speak) languages of the Yuman group (e.g., Mojave and Quechan, ). Rogers’s chronology identified three periods and four regional subdivisions of the Yuman “complex.” The periods were Yuman I (700-1050 AD), Yuman II (1050-1500 AD), and Yuman III (1500 AD-arrival of Westerners). Most archaeologists have adopted this chronology, but choose to call it Patayan. They have often changed the period dates, however, based on their particular area of research and conclusions.

Beginning in the 1930’s archaeologist Harold S. Colton worked in the northwestern area of Arizona, which was occupied in historic times by Pai language speakers (Yavapai, Hualapai, Havasupai). His colleague Lyndon L. Hargrave suggested the term “patayan” be used to describe the prehistoric culture of that area. The word is an anglicized Pai word meaning the “old people” (Hargrave, “Results of a Study of the Cohonina Branch of the Patayan Culture in 1938″, Museum Notes, Museum of Norther Arizona, December 1938). Colton felt both the prehistoric peoples of this area and those studied by Rogers to the south, were part of a common culture and should be called ‘Patayan” rather than “Yuman.” (Colton, “The Patayan Problem in the Colorado River Valley.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 1, no. 1, 1945). Rogers disagreed (Rogers, op. cit.). Not only did they disagree about what to call the cultures, but Rogers believed that lithic and ceramic artifacts were evidence of significantly different lifeways. Eventually, however, most archaeologists accepted a distinction between “Upland” and “Lowland” Patayan, and some include a third regional grouping, “Mountain” Patayan. In their survey McGuire and Schiffer (op. cit.) deal largely with the lower Colorado and Gila River valleys, i.e., Lowland Patayan (Rogers’s “down-river Yuman”). But archaeologists are still not in complete agreement as to what is, and is not “Patayan.”

In 1986 Connie L. Stone, like McGuire and Schiffer, working for the Bureau of Land Management in Arizona, published an extensive monograph called “Deceptive Desolation: Prehistory of the Sonoran Desert in West Central Arizona” (BLM Arizona, Cultural Resource Series No. 1). She followed this in 1987 with a second monograph, “People of the Desert, Canyons and Pines: Prehistory of the Patayan Country in West Central Arizona” (BLM Arizona, Cultural Resource Series No. 5). These reviews cover that part of western Arizona north of the area covered by McGuire and Schiffer (op. ct.). Although she does not clarify what should and should not be considered Patayan, she provides a valuable source of information on the physiography and climate of western Arizona, its ethnology, and a useful summary of historical and current (to 1987) archeological research. Highly recommended.

In the last thirty-five years, since McGuire and Schiffer and the monographs by Stone, there has been no comprehensive review of what is known about Patayan culture. In her textbook (Archaeology of the Southwest, Academic Press, 1997), Linda Cordell devotes only a few scattered pages to Patayan culture, and Reid and Whittlesey (The Archaeology of Ancient Arizona, University of Arizona Press, 1997) include a short chapter on the subject. Most other popular books on the Southwest fail even to mention Patayan culture.

Artifacts from Patayan culture are generally of two sorts: pottery and rock art. A characteristic, largely undecorated ceramic type is usually one of two kinds: Lower Colorado Buff Ware and Tizon Brown Ware, though many others have been identified. As its name implies, the first is characteristic of the area studied by Rogers. Tizon Brown is found in more northerly reaches of the Colorado River (west and south of the Grand Canyon). The difference between them is in the types of clay and temper used in their manufacture. The rock art consists of many petroglyph sites along the lower Colorado and Gila Rivers, and geoglyphs found on the river terraces. Geoglyphs are large zoomorphic and abstract figures made on the desert surface by removing the dark layer of “desert varnish” to reveal lighter rock beneath. Geoglyphs also include geometric rock alignments. Malcolm Rogers was among the first archaeologists to describe the geoglyphs north of Blythe, California (“Early Lithic Industries of the Lower Basin of the Colorado River and Adjacent Desert Areas”. SanDiego Museum Papers No.3, 1939). Almost fifty years later the archeologist Boma Johnson published illustrations and an ethnographic analysis of over a hundred figures (Earth Figures of the Lower Colorado and Gila River Deserts: A Functional Analysis, United States Bureau of Land Management Yuma District Office, Arizona Archaeological Society, No. 20, 1986). Johnson focused on the relation of these figures to contemporary Native American peoples of the area, not on the prehistoric people who made them.

Despite the fact archaeologists have continued to explore sites in western Arizona, the area seems relatively neglected. One reason is that the Patayan people did not construct monumental architecture. Their habitation sites are thus harder to identify and have not yielded as many or varied artifacts as the sites of other cultures. Another reason is that much research carried out was undertaken for governments and private corporations to satisfy legal requirements to conserve and/or document the cultural remains of indigenous peoples. Although some of this work has been published in academic journals or is available from the companies involved, many of the sites described have since been flooded by the damming of rivers or destroyed by other industrial activities.

New research on Patayan culture is ongoing, however. There is an excellent source of information online at the web site of Archaeology Southwest, a non-profit organization based in Tuscon. Dr. Aaron Wright, a Preservation Archaeologist there, has posted several essays on the history of Patayan research and on his current project along the lower Gila River. See especially his “Life of the Gila: the Patayan World” (https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/2020/02/20/life-of-the-gila-the-patayan-world/). It’s well worth a visit.