TYPE: Snaketown Red-on-Buff

DATE: A.D. 700 - 750 (Wallace, 1995;465)

COMMON FORMS: Regular shaped bowls. Jars with normal round shoulders and bottoms. Censers.

COMMON BACKGROUND COLORS: Brown, buff (buff slip occurring late in the phase), gray, black.

EXTERIOR TREATMENT: Hand smoothed, or polished, or polished then incised. According to Haury, more than half (65%) of the Snaketown Red-on-Buff bowls found were incised (Gladwin,1965;191). Exteriors incised, rarely jars. Early examples have deeper, more precise incising, on later examples incising begins to be less precise, less deep, and often overlap. Hand smoothed slipped examples occur late in the phase.

PASTE: Usually non-porous with variable amounts of observable muscovite (silver mica).

DESIGN PLACEMENT: Bowls – (painted all ways) Primary designs may be painted on the interiors or exteriors, or both. Often the primary design is on the interiors with a secondary lesser design on the exteriors, and occasionally the opposite is found, usually on miniatures.

SECONDARY DESIGNS: Jar rim interiors, flare rim bowl exteriors.

COMMON DESIGNS: Balanced designs with finer interlocking hatch-filled scrolls, some non-interlocking and some cross hatch-filled. Negative designs makes it’s first appearance as well as negative life forms. Checkerboard makes it’s first appearance.

KEY DIFFERENCE(S): Primarily hatched designs. Incising not as deep as the previous type Sweetwater. Hatching on early Snaketown is like that of Sweetwater, while later Snaketown hatching becomes so closely spaced, they often touch.

COMMENTS: Snaketwon Red-on-Buff are mostly Red-on-Brown examples.  Most of the buff slipped examples occur late in the phase (Haury,1976;214), however, a temperal division was apparantely never achieved. Perhaps it can be reasonable to date the buff slipped examples at approximately 725-750 A.D.

 

 

 

1N  Hohokam Early Snaketown Red-on-Buff Incised Bowl

Approximate Dimensions: 4 3/4" by 2 1/4"

 

2N Hohokam Early Snaketown Red-on-Buff Incised Bowl

Approximate Dimensions: 3 3/8" by 1 3/8"

 

 

3N  Hohokam Early Snaketown Red-on-Buff Jar

Approximate Dimensions: 3 1/2" by 2 3/4"

 

 

4N  Hohokam Late Snaketown Red-on-Buff.

This miniature jar is not buff slipped but rather a polished brownware.

The closely spaced hatch-lines point to this vessel dating late in the Snaketown Phase.

Approximate Dimensions: 3 3/4" (9.5cm) by 3 1/2" (8.8cm)

 

 

 

5Y  Hohokam Late Snaketown Red-on-Buff Jar (Buff Slipped)

Approximate Dimensions: 5 5/8" by 4 3/4"

 

 

6N Hohokam Snaketown Red-on-Buff  Jar

Approximate Dimensions: 2 5/8" by 3"

 

7Y Hohokam Snaketown Red-on-Buff.

Exterior bowl sherds showing incising.  The two sherds on the left are Early Snaketown, they have more precise incing than the two sherds on the right, which are Late Snaketown, they have less precise and less deep incising.

Sherd on far left is approximately 2 3/4" or 7cm. long.

Interiors of 7Y

The two sherds on the left are Early Snaketown showing more space between hatch lines.  The two sherds on the right are Late Snaketown showing less space between hatch lines.  The third sherd seems to be a nicely smudged example of Snaketown "Red-on-Buff".

   

   

8N Hohokam Snaketown Red-on-Buff Censer

Approximate Dimensions: 3 1/8" by 2 1/4"

 

9N Hohokam Snaketown Red-on-Buff Plate

Approximate Dimensions: 9 3/4" by 2 3/4"

10Y Hohokam Snaketown Red-on-Buff Bowl (not slipped)

Approximate Dimensions: 7" by 2 1/8"

 

 

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