For McElmo and Mesa Verde types, information has been drawn from the reports at large, classic sites
(Cattenach,
Rohn), where analysts had the opportunity to study vast numbers of sherds and large arrays of whole and reconstructable vessels. Their photographs and commentary are informative both on the range and nature of Black-on-white design, and on the non-bowl vessel forms, which are apt to be less encountered in smaller sites (as well as matters not addressed here such as vessel location, size, use, etc.).
McElmo remains a problematic type. Despite persuasive argument that it may be the major, enduring type of theP III period
(Cattenach:151ff), it is at present squeezed into a narrow definition that does not offer much in time or meaning. In the past, it has been suggested, the type was too broadly interpreted. Positioned in time between Mancos and classic, late Mesa Verde, it was used for everything from carbon-painted Mancos to Mesa Verde sherds with ‘a more open design or possibly sloppier brushwork’
(Cattenach:151-2).
Part of the difficulty seems to have arisen from type conventions that attributed only mineral paint to Mancos pottery, and only carbon to Mesa Verde. As more sites were investigated, it became evident that carbon paint also occurred late in Mancos time, and that mineral paint persisted into Mesa Verde time in some localities, particularly off Mesa Verde proper, and increasingly as one moved to the west. Paint cannot be used to distinguish McElmo.
The other difficulty was deciding what the McElmo interfaces with Mancos and Mesa Verde look like. Design remains a problem. On the Mancos end, there is help from the P II bowl and rim shape and wall thickness. On the Mesa Verde end, it blurs.
To avoid making it too broad, to put limits to this ‘transition,’ the McElmo definition is at present extremely narrow. In the most current versions
(Varien;
Wilson and
Blinman), McElmo has only band designs, is rimmed only with border-lines attached to band, never with detached framing line(s). The all-over style, attributed to both Mancos and Mesa Verde, is not presently attributed to McElmo (it is even sometimes referred to as ‘Mesa Verde All-Over’). However, at Mug House, there were statistically many more bands than sectored (all-over) designs in Mesa Verde bowls, while McElmo actually had a greater proportion of all-over and sectored designs
(Rohn:149). This constitutes a caution to beginning analysts to be guided by the full range of characteristics, to avoid using the formulae of any design list without also considering the over-all nature of the vessel or
sherd.
There are few other McElmo traits: slightly rounded rims; absence of the flat, squared rim attributed to Mesa Verde; bowl exterior decoration less common and less elaborate than Mesa Verde; band design elements less intricately conceived and interrelated.
This is not much on which to base a type, particularly where McElmo supposedly shades into Mesa Verde. It is easy to identify classic, late Mesa Verde, with its elaborate thick/thin framing lines, elaborate exteriors, and exquisitely-detailed and executed interiors.
Also recognizable are the banded bowls whose designs have a different composition from classic Mesa Verde, which seem rightly
McElmo. However, at Puzzle House, many vessels which seem clearly Mesa Verde by design, finish, and execution have the slightly rounded McElmo rim, have simple or no exterior design, lack elaborate framing lines, and have lesser quality exterior finish. To further confuse, both ‘sloppy’ and less-than-finicky Mesa Verde pottery does occur; everyone cautions against calling it McElmo.
So what IS McElmo? Why is it so hard to define, and why is it so limited in style and extent? Is it really a transition? This observer thinks it’s a case of ‘what’s in a name’ – that in this case it is the mystique in the name ‘Mesa Verde’ which has got in the way of reexamining and redefining analytic categories as the evidence has unfolded.
It is impossible to imagine prehistoric ceramic tradition going from the diverse designs of Mancos style (including an all-over version), to a period of bands-only McElmo decoration, and then back to a Mesa Verde style using both bands and all-over designs. Equally unbelievable is a truly separate McElmo tradition, coexisting in time with most of the Mesa Verde pottery, and resembling only a single expression of it very closely, but separate in some significant cultural way.
It does seem likely that the band patterns we are calling McElmo represent a design scheme that emerged at the end of Mancos time and continued through much of Mesa Verde time. Initially used on indeterminate and transitional pottery shapes, it came into its own on typical, hemispherical, thick, well-finished ‘Mesa Verde’ shapes. Eventually it was joined by the elaborated, classic version of Mesa Verde. Meanwhile, the all-over pattern, which has its roots in certain kinds of Cortez and was one of many versions of Mancos design, was not discontinued, but was picked up, altered, and emphasized, becoming a staple of the McElmo/Mesa Verde type continuum. An extensive discussion of the McElmo issue by Cattenach (151ff) proposed that ‘classic’ Mesa Verde more properly would be considered a late variety of McElmo. While that view has not governed subsequent ceramic analysis and nomenclature, its broader interpretive ramifications should not be disregarded.
Despite all these reservations about what constitutes McElmo, and what McElmo constitutes, I have typed a lot of sherds McElmo. They represent an identifiable place between clearly Mancos and ‘high’ Mesa Verde. Some are renditions of Mancos design executed with a different attitude toward placement on the vessel, and placed on vessels that are differently shaped and better slipped and polished. Some are renditions of Mesa Verde design without the framing lines and without the finicky elaboration. In a few cases they have band designs of a more simplified character, with a single framing line – and it is here that I suspect the transition to Mesa Verde really lies.
|