The Fremont are one of three minor traditions/cultures that developed in the prehistoric southwest, mainly in the area of what is now Utah. The culture is named after the Fremont River in the state of Utah where the first distinctive Fremont sites were discovered. At first, the Fremont were considered to be an inferior branch of the Anasazi culture, but now its considered to be a distinct and unique culture; a less socially organized culture but just as adaptable. There are still current debates regarding whether the Fremont were Anasazi people who migrated into Utah or if the culture was created by local Indians under Anasazi influence.

Fremont Petroglyphs at Buckhorn
Kerkphil via Wikimedia Commons

Origins

Archaeologists believe that as early as 400 CE, existing groups of hunter-gatherers on the Colorado Plateau and eastern Great Basin developed into the Fremont. Soon after, corn and other cultivated plants were being grown in central Utah, although these early Fremont farmers did not build settled villages, but remained nomadic throughout the year. Farming and pottery then gradually began to spread from this region to the rest of the Fremont area, which includes most of present day Utah and extends well into central Nevada and other neighboring states. Due to favorable climatic conditions and a keen knowledge of the area, roughly between 700 and 1250 CE was the height of Fremont culture, as well as other southwestern prehistoric cultures. Settled village life had developed in the heart of the Fremont region, with a number of farming villages consisting of semi-subterranean timber and mud pit houses and above-ground storage houses. Fremont farming techniques were as sophisticated as those of other contemporary farming societies, such as irrigation techniques. This lifestyle continued unchanged for the Fremont for about 500 years, but eventually climate changes would irritate the land.

The Anasazi inhabited the south-central portion of the Colorado Plateau, particularly the Four Corners region, while the Fremont culture did not extend south of the Colorado River. So archaeologists ask the question: How much interaction existed between these people? Sites in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Henry Mountains near the current Arizona/Utah border indicate cultural interactions between the two groups, including trade and possibly intermarriage. It is interesting that Anasazi archaeological features diminish and Fremont features increase as one moves north along the Green River.

What made them different?

Moki Hut (Granary) in a canyon crevice
near the Fremont River.
Bob Palin via Wikimedia Commons (CC)

Archaeologists studying the Fremont have found only four distinct artifact categories which readily identify this society from others of its time, since pithouse design, horticulture, and projectile points were similar across all prehistoric southwestern cultures. The four "classic" Fremont artifacts are:

1) a unique one-rod-and-bundle basketry style,
2) moccasins constructed with the dew claws a deer or mountain sheep forming the heel,
3) a distinctive art style used in pictographs, petro glyphs, and clay figures depicting trapezoidal human figures decorated in necklaces and blunt hairstyles, and
4) coiled gray pottery. 

Fremont archaeological sites, ranging from villages to small camp-sites, have been identified in practically every ecosystem of the Great Basin/Colorado Plateau region. Artifacts such as snare traps, rabbit nets, fur clothing, leather pouches, and bows and arrows proves that the Fremont developed adapted in order to reside in their imposing environment.

Pilling Figurines
Brian Lee via Wikimedia Commons (CC)

Adaptation and Disappearance

Even though they showed adaptation to the environment, between 1200 and 1500 CE, the Fremont culture began to vanish. Their exact disappearance is unknown but there are several posibilies that together contributed to bring down the Fremont. Climate changes might have made farming more difficult due to decreased precipitation. Competition for the limited resources with migrating Numic-speaking ancestors of the Ute or Shoshoni people might have caused them to die off or they may have been absorbed into a new culture. Whatever the reason might be, the Fremont showed impressive resourceful knowledge of the land they inhabited and thrived for over fifteen hundred years.

About the Author

I'm Jose Pierre and I like learning about all aspects of culture, both ancient and modern. I enjoy learning how they communicated, expressed themselves, and their technology.

The Hohokam culture was located in the desert region of southern Arizona. The Hohokam are thought to have originally migrated/traveled north out of Mexico around 300 BCE, bringing Mexican traits with them. They were creative artisans who are famous for their work with shells obtained from the Gulf of California and creative coiled pottery painted with red designs. It is probable they traded with peoples of northern Mexico because there was a great deal of Mesoamerican influence found, such as ball courts and decorative feathers.

The Hohokam became the most skillful irrigation farmers the southwest ever knew. They developed an elaborated irrigation networks using stone instruments and labor. This gave them the name of “canal builders”, until modern development obliterated their canal systems.

Artifacts and Architecture

Hohokam Etched Shells
National Parks Service via Wikimedia

Archaeologists use artifacts as markers to help identify stages in chronology of a culture or tradition. Pottery that is similarly shaped and decorated is considered to date from the same period. Details and decorations that indicate periods within the Hohokam tradition include coiled pottery made from a tan-colored clay from the Arizona hills decorated with designs painted in darker orange-red clay. Hohokam pottery is commonly referred to as Hohokam red-on-buff pottery.

Ceramic painted vessel (600-900 CE)
Wikipedia loves art via Wikimedia

Archaeological artifacts found in Hohokam sites vary from traditional stone tools to jewelry, most common are stone axe heads with deep grooves for attaching wooden handles. Long flat stone slabs or pallets have also been found and are believed to have been used to grind pigments or colored stones. Other artifacts include distinct arrow points with jagged edges and elaborate shell ornaments such as pendants and bracelets made of seashells from the Gulf of California. One of the more important artifacts found are small copper bells. The bells are evidence that the Hohokam did indeed trade with people of Mexico. Same as pottery, artifacts found in Hohokam sites or other deposits can serve as markers to date accompanying objects or other evidence.

Little is known about the appearance of Hohokam people. Archaeologists rarely find skeletal remains in Hohokam sites because they cremated their dead. They would then place the ashes into their distinctive red-on-buff pottery jars.

Structures found on Hohokam sites consisted of clusters of shallow pithouses similar to those of the anasazi culture. Impressive ball courts have also been uncovered, but they were not like ball courts found in Mexico, the Hohokam courts were large oval shaped basins.

Where did the Hohokam go?

Their fate is unclear but they seemed to have disappeared around the 15th century, the time when the Spanish first came upon the Hohokam descendants (by then the Pápagos lived in the area). Perhaps crop failures or raids from prehistoric Apache tribes led to their collapse. The Hohokam could have retreated and scattered into small villages, most likely their descendants remain in the desert today as new tribes and cultures.

Montezuma's Castle: built by the Sinagua tribe around 1400 CE [not related to Moctezuma]
Phillip Capper via Wikimedia

About the Author

I'm Jose Pierre and I like learning about all aspects of culture, both ancient and modern. I enjoy learning how they communicated, expressed themselves, and their technology.

The Anasazi culture is one of three major traditions/cultures identified in the southwestern area of the United States, mainly the "Four Corners" area also identified as where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet. The Anasazi are not a tribe nor did anyone call themselves by that name. Archaeologists apply this name to the people who farmed the “Four Corners” before 1300 CE. A culture is identified through its artifacts, architecture, crafts, and symbols used during a certain time period.

Chaco Culture: clay bowl and turquoise pendant
National Parks Service via Wikimedia

Anasazi is Navajo for “the ancient ones”. Before the start of the first pueblo period, the Anasazi were considered “basket makers” because of predominant artifacts found in sites.

A pueblo period is defined as the shift from a time when people made light baskets and nomadic movements, to heavier pottery used to keep food from spoiling and people who settled and did not move frequently.

Beginning around 700 CE (First Pueblo Period), they were considered Pueblo People because they began producing pottery. Much of the earlier pottery had simple designs and decorations such as lines, dots, zigzags, but then overtime (and maybe some influence from the Mogollon and Hohokam) designs become denser and more precise with bold geometric patterns in black-on-white and representations of birds, lizards, or humans.

Why is pottery important to archaeologists?

Pottery contains clues about the people who made it. Styles and designs change through time, and vary across regions. Pottery can be sorted or "typed" into categories based on grouped traits such as color, texture, decoration and vessel shape. Archaeologists often name a ceramic type after the place where the pottery of that style was first identified--for example, Mancos Black-on-Gray (from Mancos, Colorado) or Tin Cup Polychrome (from Tin Cup Mesa, Utah). Archaeologists then follow the principle that most pottery made in one place and time tends to be fairly uniform in decoration given that ceramic fragments ("sherds") can somewhat show when a household or village was occupied. Since certain designs are unique to specific geographic areas and periods, studying and classifying designs can help reconstruct social interactions, communication, and trade relationships between regions. It would be valuable to know if certain designs "belonged" to a family, clan, or village; or how free a potter was to invent or borrow designs.

Pit Houses

Early Anasazi architecture was made up of family unit pit houses which were shallow and roofed over with wood and mud. Later pit houses were dug deeper with only the entrance visible on the surface. Above ground storage rooms were built strictly for storage of food, but eventually they became living/sleeping/working rooms. Pit houses then transformed into what archaeologists refer to as Kivas, a square underground room for religious ritual. Inside a kiva, a deflector wall is in front of the entrance to regulate the entering draft, and most of the time a hearth pit is at the center. Between the regulator wall and the hearth pit is a small hole in the floor called a sipapu, which symbolizes the “hole through which the Anasazi believed humanity originally emerged from the underworld.” Another type of kiva is a “great kiva”, exactly the same as a regular kiva only larger to host community events and rituals.

Kivas at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
National Parks Service via Wikimedia

Cave Dwellings

Between 1200 and 1300 CE, many large and small pueblos were built into shallow caves known today as "cliff dwellings.” Cave dwellings offer several environmental advantages such as shelter for the buildings from rain and snow, usually have a good solar orientation (shade in the summer, sun in the winter), a spring is often found at the back of these caves, and do not occupy scarce agricultural land. An example of cave dwellings are the Mesa Verde villages. At first they were compact apartment complexes located on top of the mesa. But by 1150 almost all Mesa Verde villages had moved to more defensible shelters in the sides of the mesa's cliffs. Large natural rock overhangs provided enough space to construct towns such as Cliff Palace, which contains more than 200 rooms and 23 kivas. Access to the cliff dwellings was difficult and easily protected. The large proportion of kivas to rooms at Cliff Palace indicates that the town was probably a ceremonial center for many of the other smaller villages of Mesa Verde.

Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde
Lorax via Wikimedia (CC)

Chaco Canyon

Anasazi sites are found throughout Chaco Canyon National Monument, New Mexico. Chaco towns were connected to each other by a web of roads and were thriving places from 950 to 1300 CE. The roads connected to sites such as Aztec Ruins near Aztec, New Mexico, and the Salmon site near Bloomfield, New Mexico. More than 125 sites and 250 miles of have been found and mapped in this prehistoric network of roads. The most impressive towns in Chaco Canyon were large, D-shaped communities such as Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, Hungo Pavi, Una Vida, Pueblo del Arroyo, and Pueblo Alto, many of them containing great kivas for large community ceremonies. Archaeologists believe Chaco Canyon was both a ceremonial center and a center of trade, and both food and luxury goods.

Digital reconstruction of Pueblo Bonito
NASA via Wikimedia

Decline and Separation

Eventually the territories of the Anasazi and all the other Southwest traditions decreased drastically and total population began to decline. Sites on the fringes of the territories were abandoned first, followed by those closer to the traditions' centers. One of the possibilities of the decline is a disastrous drought that was recorded in tree rings from the years 1276-99, and then possibly followed by invasion. Within decades, the constant invasion of possibly the Navajo and Apache were joined by the Spaniards, and the Indian villages of the Southwest came under both native and foreign domination by the 17th century. Even after several hundred years of occupation and struggle, the descendants of the major Southwest traditions persist today as vigorous communities.

About the Author

I'm Jose Pierre and I like learning about all aspects of culture, both ancient and modern. I enjoy learning how they communicated, expressed themselves, and their technology.

It would seem that out of nowhere, Oasisamerica became a very populated ares in the American Southwest. Oasisamerica covered what we know as present day:

• US States: Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico
• Mexican States: Baja California, Sonora, and Chihuahua

The land is dry, but the Yaqui, Bravo, Colorado, and Gila Rivers, along with lakes that have been swallowed by the desert, and a milder climate (than that of Aridoamerica) allowed the development of agricultural techniques to give birth to some of the greatest desert cultures in America.

Where did the Oasisamericans come from?

There are three main hypotheses regarding the birth of cultures in Oasisamerica:

1. An individual culture originated due to favorable climate that allowed agriculture;
2. Mesoamerican nomads (possibly outsiders) moved north out of Aridoamerica and took their knowledge of agriculture with them;
3. Turquoise was very valuable in Mesoamerica - since almost all Mesoamerican turquoise comes from Arizona and New Mexico, trade may have brought knowledge of agriculture and jump-started cultural development.

Who were the Oasisamericans?

Though five cultures dominated the area, three were greater than the others: the Anasazi, the Hohokam, and the Mogollon. The other two, Fremont and Patayan, lived around them as neighboring communities that very well may have originated from the three greater cultures.

Anasazi

The Anasazi are one of the most intensely studied pre-Columbian cultures of the United States. Their territory stretched across most of New Mexico, up into Colorado, across Utah, and down to Pequeño Colorado River in Arizona. One of their main settlements (and most popular to visit) is Chaco Canyon where many baskets and ceramics have been discovered.

Hohokam

The Hohokam lived in central Arizona and parts of northern Sonora. Their territory lay between the Gila and Colorado Rivers. Though their land suffered from little rainfall and higher temperatures, they built canals for irrigation. Their principal settlements include Casa Grande, Snaketown, Red Mountain, and Pueblo de los Muertos.

Mogollon

The Mogollon are sometimes considered two cultures rather than one: Mogollon and Paquime. The Paquime culture derived from the original Mogollon culture. Their territory stretched from the Anasazi and Hohokam borders into Sonora and most of Chihuahua. The Mogollon, unlike their two dominant neighbors, buried their dead. Most of these graves have been looted and/or destroyed by treasure hunters (these graves often had many riches including ceramics and semiprecious stones).

Fremont

The Fremont lived north of the Anasazi in Utah. Their origins are unknown but they possibly derived from the Anasazi or Atapascan culture (buffalo hunters). They are known for their Moki huts (granary storage units) in cliff crevices. The Range Creek Canyon site is the most well preserved area with evidence of the Fremont culture.

Patayan

The Patayan area began east of the Hohokam and expanded across Arizona into southern California, Baja California, and Sonora. They are known for their Mogollon looking pottery made using the paddle-and-anvil style which is Hohokam - leaving their origin questionable, but they were clearly influenced by both.

Decline and Change

Oasisamericans were an agricultural society that thrived hundreds of years. These cultures began declining in power around the time of the Spanish Conquest (though the Spanish are not responsible for all of their disappearances). Many of these cultures split into "new" cultures, such as the Zuñi and Hopi. These desert communities understood how to use their land - their monumental earthen structures are testimony to their greatness. The Pueblo desert people knew how to create true sustainable architecture, something many of us are just beginning to understand the value of.

For Further Reading:

• Oasisamerican Cultures: The Anasazi 
• Oasisamerican Cultures: The Hohokam 
• Oasisamerican Cultures: The Mogollon 
• Oasisamerican Cultures: The Fremont 
• Oasisamerican Cultures: The Patayan

About the Author

I'm Melanie, the founder of BermudaQuest and an archaeology undergraduate at the University of New Mexico. I love writing about ancient and modern cultures. My goal is to make information about our origins available to everyone [in simple English!]