front cover of Deadly Landscapes
Deadly Landscapes
Case Studies in Prehistoric Southwestern Warfare
Glen E. Rice
University of Utah Press, 2012

Deadly Landscapes presents a series of cases that advance the rigorous examination of war in the archaeological record. The studies encompass examples from the Hohokam, Sinagua, Mogollon, and Anasazi regions, plus a pan-regional study of iconography covering the Colorado Plateau and the Rio Grande Valley. All of the cases focus on the narrow time frame from AD 1200 to the early-1400s, during which evidence for warfare is most pervasive.

Contributors to this volume present varying definitions of warfare and use differing types of data to test for the presence of warfare. These detailed case studies give clear demonstration of a pattern of significant warfare in the late prehistoric period that will alter our understanding of ancient Southwestern cultures.

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front cover of Sending the Spirits Home
Sending the Spirits Home
The Archaeology of Hohokam Mortuary Practices
Glen E. Rice
University of Utah Press, 2015
Winner of the Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Prize 

This data-rich monograph provides new and stimulating perspectives on the Hohokam people and their mortuary practices. It breaks new ground by using the knowledge of descendent peoples to generate archaeologically testable hypotheses; demonstrating the need for mortuary analyses conducted at a regional scale; and synthesizing of the interaction of beliefs, ideology, social organization, and ecology in determining Hohokam mortuary practices. Various chapters discuss body treatment, mortuary furniture and goods, mortuary architecture, and cemeteries, and numerous figures help document the variability of Hohokam practices.  

The study synthesizes data from various excavations, applied archaeology, and cultural resource management projects. With its review of past research and ethnographic accounts along with line drawings of mortuary features and artifacts, Sending the Spirits Home provides tools for the adoption of standardized protocols needed to facilitate cross-project comparisons on which future regional syntheses can be based. Although written for archaeologists, the book does not require a specialist’s knowledge to appreciate its insights into these early people of the Southwest. 
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front cover of Vapaki
Vapaki
Ancestral O’Odham Platform Mounds of the Sonoran Desert
Edited by Glen E. Rice, Arleyn W. Simon, and Chris Loendorf
University of Utah Press, 2022

This volume presents a far-ranging conversation on the topic of Hohokam platform mounds in the history of the southern Arizona desert, exploring why they were built, how they were used, and what they meant in the lives of the farming communities who built them. Vapaki brings together diverse theoretical approaches, a mix of big-picture and tightly focused perspectives, detailed coverage for regional specialists of variation in the mounds, a broad synthesis useful for those working from other regional and topical foundations, and a rich corpus of perspectives and ideas for further research. Contributors grapple with questions about platform mounds, including the social, political, ideological, symbolic, and adaptive factors that contributed to their development, spread, and eventual cessation.

The differing perspectives presented here about what motivated Ancestral O’Odham populations of the Hohokam Period to build these monuments, whether as displays of status, identity, political ability, membership in regional networks, or architectural models of the cosmological order, offer insights to researchers studying monumental architecture in other contexts. O’Odham knowledge of the history and uses of mounds is combined with archaeological data to understand the place of platform mounds in the lives of the Ancestors and their continued presence among modern descendants.

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