Sinagua culture
The Sinagua are an archaeological culture in the southwestern United States . Their distribution area in today's US state of Arizona is around the Verde Valley and Sedona , the exact extent of the culture and its dating are not certain. Other authors do not regard them as an independent culture, but rather as a local form of the Anasazi or summarize them with Cohonina and Patayan to form the Hakataya .
The name is derived from the earlier Spanish name Sierra de Sin Agua (mountains without water) of the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff . It was first used by Harold Colton in 1939 and then in a 1946 synopsis.
Distribution area
The Sinagua settled on part of the Mogollon Rim , which, as a terrain level, separates the Colorado Plateau in the north from part of the Basin and Range area in the south, and in a small part in the southwest of the Colorado Plateau. The greatest concentration of the buildings attributed to Sinagua is in the Verde Valley , the canyon of the Verde River . Individual settlements with elements of the Sinagua extend from the Little Colorado River in the northeast to the Salt River in the south. Current localities in the region include Flagstaff and Sedona . The most important settlements are designated as federal memorials: Montezuma Castle National Monument , Walnut Canyon National Monument and Tuzigoot National Monument each preserve different site types and forms of construction.
development
The eruption of the Sunset Crater in 1064/65 is considered to be the beginning of the Sinagua culture . The large-scale but thin ejection of volcanic ash improved the quality of the soil and, in particular, the ability of the soil to store water and thus attracted immigrants to the previously sparsely populated area. Some authors have already started the Sinagua 500. The Sinagua set up scattered settlements mainly on slopes, wherever they found small, agriculturally usable areas. Larger settlements with more than 50 rooms in all houses together are rare, Elden Pueblo with a little under 100 rooms is the largest known settlement from this era.
The settlement structure changed around 1250. In the San Francisco Peaks east of Flagstaff, the Sinagua built the New Caves settlement complex on O'Neill Crater . They built a settlement each on the north and south ridge of the crater, the yoke in between served as a public square with a building designed as a community house. The excavations of the settlement between 1992 and 2003 found around 200 individual structures in the two cores, of which around 75–125 are considered inhabited. From this they conclude that there are around 600 residents in the core settlements, as well as another 50–75 inhabited structures in the area, and that there are up to 800 residents of the New Caves . The cause of the change in the form of settlement is considered to be an external threat. The ridge only has advantages in terms of defensive capabilities; the long distance to drinking water and arable land would have ruled out this location before the upheaval. New Cave was also unsustainable. The settlement already went out around 1300, the reason being discussed is the lack of water.
The end of the Sinagua cannot be precisely determined. The ceramic style they used was made until around 1550, houses can only be traced back to around 1450.
Way of life and buildings
The Sinagua were farmers. The main crops were beans and squash squash , and cotton had been known in the region for around 500 years. Around 1200, and especially after a drought at the end of the 13th century, they introduced irrigated agriculture . The largest irrigation project is part of Montezuma Castle National Monument and consists of a catchment and storage basin that, fed by a spring, could hold back up to 5.7 million liters of water.
They buried their dead near the buildings, grave finds suggest a height of women around 1.55 m and men around 1.68 m. So they hardly differed from Europeans of the same time.
Sinagua ceramics are known as Alameda Brown Ware . The shapes are characterized by high walls, the material is gray-brown and mixed with broken shards or later with volcanic ash as a lean agent . The goods were fired in simple, open ovens. Other artifacts included baskets, stone and horn tools, and jewelry. The latter include strings of pearls, bracelets and hundreds of pendants. Pieces of jewelry were mainly made of shells and turquoise .
Initially they built Sinagua pit houses with wooden constructions of the upper walls and roofs, but they soon started building pueblos . Some of these were built on rocky crests above the river valleys, and some of them were built on ledges in rock faces.
Cultural connections
In the Sinagua elements of the Anasazi, the Hohokam and the Mogollon are mixed. Ceramic styles and buildings suggest that the Hohokam were the oldest of the cultures. After the volcanic eruption and the improvement of the soil, members of different cultures moved to the region: “The result was a mixture of influences from the Hohokam, Anasazi and Mogollon, which never merged into a separate culture.” Similarities with the Mogollon ceramics are more obvious The geologically identical raw material can be traced back to cultural proximity, the buildings develop parallel to those of the Anasazi. "Perhaps the best definition of Sinagua is that it is not any of the other great cultures, but all of them at the same time."
Other authors refuse to classify it as an independent culture and regard it as Western Anasazi Province, despite the distinctive objects, because the totality of the artefacts with those of neighboring groups.
As far as the Sinagua are regarded as a local expression of the Hakataya , the highland Yuma peoples of the Walapai , Havasupai and Yavapai should be regarded as today's descendants. According to their tradition, the Hopi claim that the Sinagua immigrated to their areas between 1250 and 1450, adopted their customs and merged with them. This cannot be proven archaeologically.
Web links
- Logan Museum of Anthropology: Ancient Cultures of the Southwest - Sinagua (English)
literature
- Helmut von Papen : Pueblos and Kivas - the story of the Anasazi and their neighbors . Edition Vogelsang, Viersen, 2000, ISBN 3-00-006869-4 Chapter The Sinagua Culture, pages 83-87
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfgang Haberland: American Archeology . Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991, ISBN 3-534-07839-X , page 223
- ^ A b Fred Plog: Prehistory - Western Anasazi . In: Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 9 Southwest , Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1979, p. 124
- ^ A b Brian M. Fagan: The early North America - Archeology of a continent . Beck, Munich 1993 (original title: Ancient North America, The Archeology of a Continent , translated by Wolfgang Müller) ISBN 3-406-37245-7 , page 260
- ^ A b Albert H. Schroeder: Sinagua Division . In: Edward B. Jelks: Historical Dictionary of North American Archeology . Greenwood Press 1988, ISBN 0-313-24307-7 , page 452
- ^ National Park Service: Walnut Canyon National Monument - People
- ↑ Harold Sellers Colton: The Sinagua; a summary of the archeology of the region of Flagstaff, Arizona . Flagstaff, Northern Arizona Society of Science & Art, 1946.
- ↑ a b c d e f Logan Museum: Sinagua
- ^ Carl Waldman (Ed.): Atlas of the North American Indian . New York, Facts on File, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8160-6858-6 , p. 28
- ↑ Us Forest Service: Elden Pueblo Archaeological Site
- ↑ Kathryn A. Kamp, John C. Whittaker: A Sinagua Acropolis - Architectural Adaptation at New Caves, Arizona . In: Kiva , Volume 74, No 3, pages 281-304
- ↑ a b c d Papen: Pueblos and Kivas
- ↑ Wolfgang Haberland: American Archeology . Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991, ISBN 3-534-07839-X , page 199