The Goat Hill Site is a 35-room masonry pueblo with a D-shaped kiva located in Safford Valley of the Gila River in southeastern Arizona. Nestled within the upper bajada of the Pinaleno Mountains, this site is situated on top of Goat Hill, a steep butte rising some 70 meters above the surrounding landscape. Evidence from an investigation suggests that the site was inhabited by a group of western Anasazi who migrated from their homeland in northeastern Arizona in the mid to late thirteenth century and occupied Goat Hill presumably from about 1270 to 1300 AD.
By 1265 AD., the western Anasazi groups began migrating southward, toward and beyond the Mogollon Rim in present-day Arizona. Archaeological evidence suggests some of these groups retained traditional Anasazi practices and traits, while others probably blended with encountered communities through acculturation. In general, western Anasazi movements have been tracked by observing architectural construction methods and styles, ceramic and other artifact assemblages, as well as other factors. The best-known example of a migrant Kayenta Anasazi occupation is at Point of Pines in east-central Arizona. Within this large pueblo, Emil Haury (1958) identified a 70-room block, referred to as the Maverick Mountain unit, which he believed was occupied by a group of immigrants from the Kayenta region from about A. D. 1270 to 1290. He based this judgment on architectural styles and features in the rooms, a painted ceramic assemblage that includes forms and styles foreign to the Point of Pines area, and the presence of a D-shaped kiva, all of which are similar to traits found in contemporaneous settlements in the Kayenta and Tusayan Anasazi regions. Interestingly, a sudden conflagration (which Haury felt was started by hostile neighbors) destroyed most of the migrants homes, killing several people trapped in a room. Shortly after this event, evidence of the Maverick Mountain unit at Point of Pines disappeared from the archaeological record.
The artifact assemblages excavated at Goat Hill also suggest a cultural affiliation with the western Anasazi groups. The dominant painted pottery types, which account for approximately 95% of the painted ware sample, are very similar to Maverick Mountain Black-on-Red and Maverick Mountain Polychrome ware. These two types, defined from the ceramic assemblage found in the Maverick Mountain unit at Point of Pines, are similar in execution to two western Anasazi pottery types, Tusayan Polychrome and Kayenta Polychrome. Based on dendrochronological dates assigned to the Point of Pines assemblage, the two Maverick Mountain ceramic types (sometimes designated as Point of Pines variety) probably date from approximately 1250 to 1300 AD. However, while the Black-on-Red and Polychrome ceramics at Goat Hill are similar to the respective Maverick Mountain types, they are sufficiently different to justify exclusion from the Maverick Mountain (Point of Pines variety) types. The Maverick Mountain pottery types are not thought to date much later than 1300 AD., and the Goat Hill Site was probably not occupied much beyond that date. The combination of all these Anasazi-like traits in a site far removed from the western Anasazi heartland strongly suggests that the occupants of the Goat Hill site migrated, or are closely related to migrants, from the western Anasazi area.
Anasazi pottery was made into various forms and styles and had many functions. Anasazi women made bowls, mugs, ladles, ollas (two handled pots), vessels with spouts, canteens, pitchers, bottles--nearly as wide a range of containers as you would find in a modern kitchen. Mesa Verde and Chaco potters usually did their painting after the pot was polished, so the design stood out clearly on the piece. Potters still coiled clay and pinched or corrugated the coils to make their pots. Neck banding was another new pottery style, in which the bowl part of a container was scraped smooth but the neck was left coiled and unpinched. Most of that pottery was colored gray. Later Anasazi potters found it was easier to paint the pottery glazed with a white product before firing. The first designs were small and fine, a combination of dots or small geometric shapes, later they started winding their pottery designs. Pottery logically follows agriculture because they used pots and other ceramics to cook grains. In the beginning pottery was not a form of art, but instead used for cooking and jobs.
Haury, Emil W., Prehistory of The American Southwest, P. 414, copyright 1986. The University of Arizona Press
Anasazi Arts, P. 2, Feb. 2000. http://www.parktudor.pvt.k12.in.us/Anasazi/aarts.htm
The Goat Hill Site, P. 1-4, Feb. 2000. http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/anthro/projects
Written by: Theresa Fenderson