Salado Polychrome

Roosevelt Red Ware, also known as Salado Red Ware and Salado Polychrome, is a late prehistoric pottery tradition found across large portions of Arizona and New Mexico. The tradition involves the combination of red, white, and black paint in varying configurations along with compositional and morphological characteristics. This ceramic tradition begins about AD 1280-1290 and lasts until at least AD 1450 based on tree-ring dating.

Archaeologists have argued over the nature of Salado as a cultural phenomenon or an ideological one spreading through the Southwest. Some archaeologists have chosen to use the term Salado Polychromes so as not to give undue emphasis to the Roosevelt Lake area, once thought to be the center of production. Both terms, Salado Red Ware and Roosevelt Red Ware are still used by archaeologists.

In her 1994 volume, Dr. Patricia Crown suggested four models with which to analyze Salado Polychromes. They are "elite symbols of authority or items of exchange," "indicators of participation in an economic alliance/regional system," "objects associated with the spread of a religious ideology," and as "markers of ethnicity for a migrant group" (Crown 1994: vi). More recently archaeologists have examined these types distribution across the Southwest (Lyons 2003) and suggests that these types are markers of migrant groups emanating from northeastern Arizona.

Roosevelt Red Ware is divided by archaeologists into a series of types, which cover shorter spans of time, based on configurations of the painted designs and rim profiles of bowls. Roosevelt Red Ware has traditionally been organized into three types based on stylistic differences. More recently researchers at Archaeology Southwest (previously named the Center for Desert Archaeology) in Tucson, Arizona have identified an additional six types based on a combination of stylistic and morphological characteristics. For bowls with both interior and exterior decoration, the exterior style is labeled as the variant (Example: Gila interior with a Tonto exterior would be labeled as Gila Polychrome: Tonto Variant)

All types within this ware share a number of broad categorical similarities although over a roughly 250 year time span significant variation is seen. The paste is generally brown to reddish-brown in color and is tempered with sand. Generally red and/or white slip cover both the interior and exterior and black paint is used on one or both surfaces, usually surrounded by white rather than red slip. Black paint is most commonly organic, but a mixture of organic and mineral paint appears on some vessels. Petrographic analyses have shown that Roosevelt Red Ware is produced across the full distributional range.

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