Mogollon culture

The Mogollon culture was a prehistoric archaeological culture of the North American Southwest, centred on southern New Mexico and Arizona and reaching into northern Sonora and Chihuahua, western Texas and the Mogollon Rim country. Flourishing from about 200 CE until the Spanish arrival in the mid-16th century, it is one of the best-known prehistoric cultural divisions of the region, alongside the Hohokam and Ancestral Puebloans. The northern Mogollon country belongs to the Oasisamerica tradition of settled farmers, while its southern span extends into Aridoamerica. Mogollon pithouse villages grew maize, beans and squash, produced brown-paste pottery and, in the Mimbres branch, the celebrated black-on-white painted bowls depicting animals and geometric designs. Great kivas served as ceremonial centres, and cliff dwellings such as those at Gila Cliff Dwellings sheltered late communities. Trade linked the Mogollon with the Hohokam to the west, the Ancestral Puebloans to the north and Mesoamerican networks to the south. After about 1450 many villages were abandoned in the general Pueblo-area depopulation, and descendant communities moved toward the Rio Grande pueblos.