![]() Hohokam traditions changed and seemingly disappeared, at least in a material sense, as immigrants from the northern and central Southwest arrived and the region’s population declined over many generations. Indeed, copper bells, mirrors, and macaws actually originated in ancient West Mexico and entered Hohokam communities through pilgrimage or trade. Many of these were inspired by contemporaneous communities far to the south. These include palettes ground from reflective stone, stone censers, fired-clay figurines, conch shell trumpets, marine shell jewelry (especially armlets and bracelets), tiny turquoise mosaic tiles, cotton textiles, copper bells, pyrite mirrors, and macaws. Making and Trading Special ThingsĪrchaeologists associate certain objects and materials with Hohokam communities, though these were not necessarily used or made throughout the Hohokam world. Later in time, they made polished red bowls and jars. They had plain pots for cooking and storage and gray-, brown- and buff-colored vessels with elaborate designs in red paint. Potters of this tradition used a paddle-and-anvil technique, where they held a stone anvil inside the vessel and beat the walls with a wooden paddle to form the desired shape, size, and thickness. Archaeologists refer to these constructions as “compounds.” Making and Using Pottery Over time, they erected adobe walls that connected their houses and enclosed adjacent courtyard areas. Platform mounds fell out of use by about 1350.Īlso by about 1250, most people were living in aboveground adobe dwellings. ![]() The religion associated with platform mounds was probably less inclusive than that associated with ballcourts. Ceremonies conducted on top of these “platform mounds” were visible to spectators below. By 1250, these large, solid edifices with flat surfaces were common at large villages across the Hohokam world. Rituals associated with raised mounds first developed in the Greater Phoenix area. That cessation, and the new ritual architecture that began to appear, signal important but as yet poorly understood changes in religious, economic, and social life. Villagers changed how they were living on the landscape, and communities ceased using ballcourts, though not all at once. Watching or participating in ball games brought people together, and it provided opportunities to visit with friends and family and trade raw materials and finished goods.įrom 1075 to 1250 was a time of great transition. These open-air facilities suggest connections, probably indirect, with Mexico. 750 to 1075, people excavated large oval basins that archaeologists call “ballcourts.” The excavated earth formed raised berms around the sunken courts. 500, families arranged their courtyard groups around a central plaza area.Īt most large villages dating from A.D. In larger villages dating after about A.D. ![]() Villagers arranged their dwellings in courtyard groups, such that doorways faced each other and opened onto a common central area with shared features-storage pits, ramadas, outdoor ovens, and other facilities. Wooden posts and beams formed structures that builders covered with grass and adobe. Initially, Hohokam dwellings were “pithouses.” People dug shallow pits and built houses in them. Just as the O’odham see a Huhugam continuum, archaeologists have verified that Hohokam traditions were rooted in a much deeper past in the Sonoran Desert. ![]() We are beginning to see the origins of Hohokam irrigation technology among much earlier communities along the Santa Cruz River in Tucson, where maize dates back to 2200 B.C., and probably earlier. The magnitude of these systems is best attested in the Phoenix area, where hundreds of miles of canals tapped the life-sustaining waters of the Gila and Salt Rivers. Notably, Hohokam communities built extensive canal systems to water vast fields of corn, beans, squash, and cotton. Unique styles of decorated pottery, specific architectural traditions, and other shared customs distinguish these ancestral people from their neighbors. ![]() Over a millennium, farmers, craftspeople, and traders established large, permanent villages in the river valleys of central and southern Arizona. Still, it is important to understand that what archaeologists identify materially as “Hohokam” more likely represents an ideology-a way of thinking-that itself varied across the Hohokam landscape and across those thousand years. 400 to 1450-which researchers call “Hohokam”-as something distinct from what came before and what followed. Archaeologists recognize the material culture of the ancestors who lived from about A.D. O’odham peoples of the Sonoran Desert refer to their ancestors, from time immemorial to the present, as Huhugam. ![]()
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