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12 Crooked Ridge Village Finally, the excavation of Crooked Ridge Village has led to the establishment of another regional variant, the Black River Branch, of the Mogollon Culture Pattern. —Joe Ben Wheat (1954a:182) Perhaps by the end of the 1948 season, the strategic plan for resolving the Mogollon controversy was taking firmer shape in Haury’s mind.The scatter of brown plain ware and red ware on the surface of Crooked Ridge Village indicated an early village of substantial size, and several pit houses had been excavated late in the 1948 season. Haury’s next move was to put Wheat in charge of the Crooked RidgeVillage excavations during the 1949 field season. Haury recalled: The time had come to assign specific research goals to students who were advanced enough in their training to manage work crews of Apaches and who would be able to follow a course eventually leading to the write-up and publication of results. The first to be accorded this independence was Joe Ben Wheat, and the ruin for which he was responsible was Crooked Ridge Village (az w:10:15), an early Mogollon site. . . . Wheat spent several seasons on this site; it provided the material for his doctoral dissertation and his work was published (Wheat 1954a,1955).Most importantly,the work on Crooked RidgeVillage represented the solid beginning of the Point of Pines chronology and clear evidence that the initial pottery-making and agricultural people of the region were those of the Mogollon culture. (Haury 1989:53) The Mogollon of Crooked Ridge Village Crooked RidgeVillage is located on a long,narrow,branching ridge about three miles from Point of Pines.When Wheat dug there and probably also in prehistory, the ridge was a grassy, low slope dotted with pines overlooking a valley cut by an intermittent stream—a locale that was ideally suited for floodwater farming. Four seasons of fieldwork there would excavate 24 pit structures among an estimated 100 and define a new regional variant of the Mogollon culture, the Black River Branch (Wheat 1954a:7). Domestic architecture included three different house types—rectangular (nearly square) or bean-shaped houses with simple ramped entryways; rectangular or round houses with vestibule entryways; and rectangular houses with southern annexes. Like other Mogollon houses, most of the Crooked Ridge pit structures were true pit houses with long, covered entries and four-post roof-support systems. Ceremonial structures were large and round with combined ramp-and-ladder or stepped entries, unusual floor features (floor drums?), and possible pilasters in the walls. Pottery was limited to Alma Plain, Point of Pines and Black River varieties (distinguished by the nature of inclusions); variants of Alma Plain, such as Alma Rough and Alma Smudged; and San Francisco Red. Nonlocal pottery from other Mogollon regions,Hohokam ceramics,Anasazi ceramics, and a locally made version of Dos Cabezas Red-on-brown also were found. Types such as Mogollon Red-on-brown, Vahki Plain, Sweetwater Red-on-buff, and Snaketown Red-on-buff were considered consistent with the Circle Prairie phase occupation of Crooked Ridge; the presence of Kiatuthlanna Black-on-white and Gila Butte Red-on-buff suggested a later occupation following the Circle Prairie occupation, and a handful of Santa Cruz Red-on-buff sherds seemed inconsistent with other cross-dated ceramics.Unfortunately,tree-ring samples did not yield dates, and the site was dated solely by ceramic means. The early Circle Prairie phase at Crooked Ridge equated with the Georgetown phase of the Mimbres Branch, the Dos Cabezas phase of the San Simon region, and the Hilltop phase of the Forestdale Valley. The late Circle Prairie phase was equivalent to the postulated San Lorenzo, Pinaleño, and Cottonwood phases of these regions, respectively. In placing Crooked Ridge Village in its cultural context, Wheat (1954a:181) left no doubt about his views. “The architecture is basically Mogollon,” he wrote, “although it varies from the eastern Mogollon.” Ceramically, “Crooked Ridge Village is clearly Mogollon. The types of pottery—Alma Plain,Alma Rough,Alma Smudged,Alma Textured, and San Francisco Red—are part and parcel of the Mogollon tradition.” To 114 Chapter 12 that,Wheat added the broad-line red-on-brown pottery.And finally,“All categories of artifacts [other than pottery] belong to the Mogollon patterns and extend them.” Combining these typical Mogollon traits with the minor variations Wheat observed in architecture, vessel forms, the quantity of sand-tempered pottery, and so on, Wheat concluded that he had defined...

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