Pataya (pah-tah-yáh) comes from the Pai linguistic branch (Hualapai, Havasupai, Yavapai, and Paipai) from the Yuman-Cochimí language family, and translates loosely to "old people".
The historic Yuman-speaking peoples in this region were skilled warriors and active traders, maintaining exchange networks with the Pima in southern Arizona and with the Californian Pacific Coast tribes.
This placed them in close proximity to contemporaneous Colonial period (AD 750–950) Hohokam communities around present-day Gila Bend.
Regular and extensive social and economic connections are apparent in pottery distributions and in stunning similarities in petroglyph iconography around Patayan and Hohokam settlements.
These droplets indicate a transit route between the Hohokam and the Patayan through a small canyon that went from the Lower Colorado River to the upper terraces.
This indicates that Patayan potters used clay sources located in the river area near the Gila Bend, which was dominated by Hohokam Settlements.
There are a few specific sites like the Patayan occupation at Willow Beach that suggest there was an extensive trade network at play that extended from the Four Corners up the Pacific Coast.
Encampments were small and impermanent, and people did not accumulate an abundance of traceable material culture due to their nomadic ways of life.
With residences tied so close to the floodplain, however, many of these ancestral villages were eradicated by massive floods; these ecological circumstances led these lowland Patayan farming communities to not create enduring works of public architecture.
During Patayan II (1050–1500), this material culture spread outward to southern Nevada, western Arizona, and to the Salton Sea.
Their settlements were small and impermanent, and there isn't a large amount of enduring material culture due to their nomadic ways of life.
[4] Early Patayan sites contain shallow pithouses or surface "long houses", consisting of a series of rooms arranged in a line.
There has been evidence that there were also some natural rock structures and temporary housing shelters grouped together in small clusters that lends itself to the variety.
As the Patayan began to explore more land, new regional areas were labeled the Cerbat, Amacava (or the Mojave), Prescott, and Cohonina.
The Patayan Culture may have originally emerged along the Colorado River, extending from the area around modern Kingman northeast to the Grand Canyon.
These people appear to have practiced floodplain agriculture, a conclusion based on the discovery of manos and metates used to process corn in these areas.
Tizon Brown Ware was made by the Shoshonean Cahuilla, CupeEio, and Luiseño, as well as by upland Yuman tribes.
Twelve figurines were recovered while conducting a pedestrian survey of a 20-30 meter area.. 11 of them are Buff Ware that has no inclusions, and made from pure silt collected at the Colorado River Basin.