TYPE: Sweetwater Red-on-Gray

DATE: A.D. 675 - 700 (Wallace, 1995;465)

COMMON FORMS:  Regular shaped bowls and Jars with “normal” round shoulders, censers.

COMMON BACKGROUND COLORS: Natural gray, brown, or both.

EXTERIOR TREATMENT: Tool polished. At Snaketown, 25% of the bowls are deeply incised (Gladwin,1965;195). (No incised jars have been found) Often deeply incised sets of polished parallel lines were made at different angles to other sets on the same vessel.

PASTE: Non-porous with variable amounts of observable 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.

COMMON DESIGNS: Hatch-filled scrolls and triangles. Smaller hatch- filled triangles on inner lips of many jars. Serrated edges make their first appearance as does hatching and interlocked scrolls. Most scroll designs are single, non-interlocking.

KEY DIFFERENCES: Finer linework than Estrella, yet not as fine as Snaketown. Many examples show deep, well executed incising. Some earlier type Estrella phase vessels have incised coils, while Sweetwater vessels seems to be polished smooth then incised. The incising on Sweetwater examples are deeper than found on later or newer types, such as Snaketown and Gila Butte.

1N Hohokam Sweetwater Red-on-Gray effigy vessel

of a pregnant human female with painted hatched bands.

Approximate Dimensions: 4" (10cm) high.

2Y Hohokam Sweetwater Red-on-Gray (ca. 675-700) with vertical and horizontal

hatched triangles painted on the exterior, and diagonal hatched triangles

painted on the interior. This vessel as well as the human effigy vessel above, show that

Sweetwater Red-on-Gray is not always gray but often, and perhaps more correctly a brownware that is often fire-clouded to a gray color..

Approximate Dimensions: 5 1/4" or 13.2cm by 3 1/4" or 8cm

3N Hohokam Sweetwater Red-on-Gray bowl, exhibiting deep incising on the exterior.

4Y Hohokam Sweetwater Red-on-Gray sherd, showing broadline painting on a

patterned incised exterior.

4Y Same sherd showing regular sized linework on the interior.

Approximate Dimensions: 4 1/2" or 11.5cm long.

5N Hohokam Sweetwater Red-on-Gray Jar

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

6N Hohokam Sweetwater Red-on-Gray Scoop with Human Head

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

This page last revised: 07/28/2011

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