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16 books match the query 'Hohokam culture'
Between Desert and River
Hohokam Settlement and Land Use in the Los Robles CommunityChristian E. Downum
University of Arizona Press, 1993
"Downum's carefully done volume is an important contribution to Hohokam archaeology. . . . Clearly written and illustrated."—AM Indian Quarterly
Centuries of Decline during the Hohokam Classic Period at Pueblo Grande
Edited by David R. Abbott
University of Arizona Press, 2003
New data from major excavations in Phoenix, however, suggest that little was "classic" about the Classic period at Pueblo Grande. These findings challenge views of Hohokam society that prevailed for most of the twentieth century, suggesting that for Pueblo Grande it was a time of decline rather than prosperity, a time marked by overpopulation, environmental degradation, resource shortage, poor health, and social disintegration. During this period, the Hohokam in the lower Salt River Valley began a precipitous slide toward the eventual abandonment of a homeland that they had occupied for more than one thousand years.
This volume is a long-awaited summary of one of the most important data-recovery projects in Southwest archaeology, synthesizing thousands of pages of data and text published in seven volumes of contract reports. The authors—all leading authorities in Hohokam archaeology who played primary roles in this revolution of understanding—here craft a compelling argument for the eventual collapse of Hohokam society in the late fourteenth century as seen from one of the largest and seemingly most influential irrigation communities along the lower Salt River.
Drawing on extremely large and well-preserved collections, the book reveals startling evidence of a society in decline as reflected in catchment analysis, archaeofaunal assemblage composition, skeletal studies, burial assemblages, artifact exchange, and ceramic production. The volume also includes a valuable new summary of the archival reconstruction of the architectural sequence for the Pueblo Grande platform mound.
With its wealth of data, interpretation, and synthesis, Centuries of Decline represents a milestone in our understanding of Hohokam culture. It is a key reference for Southwest archaeologists who seek to understand the Hohokam collapse and a benchmark for anyone interested in the prehistory of Arizona.
Ceramics and Community Organization among the Hohokam
David R. Abbott
University of Arizona Press, 2000
Through ceramic analyses from Classic period sites such as Pueblo Grande, Abbott shows that ceramic production sources and exchange networks can be determined from the composition, surface treatment attributes, and size and shape of clay containers. The distribution networks revealed by these analyses provide evidence for community boundaries and the web of social ties within them.
Abbott's meticulous research documents formerly unrecognized horizontal cohesiveness in Hohokam organizational structure and suggests how irrigation was woven into the fabric of their social evolution. By demonstrating the contribution that ceramic research can make toward resolving issues about community organization, this work expands the breadth and depth of pottery studies in the American Southwest.
Engendering Households in the Prehistoric Southwest
Edited by Barbara J. Roth
University of Arizona Press, 2010
Now Southwestern archaeologists have begun to delve into the task of “engendering” their sites. Using a “close to the ground” approach, the contributors to this book seek to engender the prehistoric Southwest by examining evidence at the household level.
Focusing on gendered activities in household contexts throughout the southwestern United States, this book represents groundbreaking work in this area. The contributors view households as a crucial link to past activities and behavior, and by engendering these households, we can gain a better understanding of their role in prehistoric society. Gender-structured household activities, in turn, can offer insight into broader-scale social and economic factors. The chapters offer a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to engendering households and examine topics such as the division of labor, gender relations, household ritual, ceramic and ground stone production and exchange, and migration.
Engendering Households in the Prehistoric Southwest ultimately addresses broader issues of interest to many archaeologists today, including households and their various forms, identity and social boundary formation, technological style, and human agency. Focusing on gendered activities in household contexts throughout the southwestern United States, this book represents groundbreaking work in this area. The contributors view households as a crucial link to past activities and behavior, and by engendering these households, we can gain a better understanding of their role in prehistoric society. Gender-structured household activities, in turn, can offer insight into broader-scale social and economic factors.
Excavations at Punta de Agua in the Santa Cruz River Basin, Southeastern Arizona
J. Cameron Greenleaf
University of Arizona Press, 1975
Expanding the View of Hohokam Platform Mounds
An Ethnographic PerspectiveMark D. Elson
University of Arizona Press, 1998
Using this information, he develops a number of important new generalizations about how people used mounds. Elson then applies these data to the study of a prehistoric settlement system in the eastern Tonto Basin of Arizona that contained five platform mounds. He argues that the mounds were used variously as residences and ceremonial facilities by competing descent groups and were an indication of hereditary leadership. They were important in group integration and resource management; after abandonment they served as ancestral shrines. Elson's study provides a fresh approach to an old puzzle and offers new suggestions regarding variability among Hohokam populations. Its innovative use of comparative data and analyses enriches our understanding of both Hohokam culture and other ancient societies.
Hohokam Along the Cañada del Oro
Specialized Land Use at the Rooney Ranch SiteEdited by Jeffrey T. Jones and Helen L. O’Brien
University of Arizona Press, 2026
This work presents the results of more than a decade of archaeological fieldwork at the Rooney Ranch site in Oro Valley, Arizona—an upland Hohokam village that played a key role in regional agave production. Edited by Jeffrey T. Jones and Helen L. O’Brien, this volume synthesizes extensive data collected by the Pima Community College Centre for Archaeological Field Training, offering a rare and richly detailed look at how small peripheral settlements contributed to the sustainability of larger Hohokam communities in the Sonoran Desert. Through GIS-based mapping and the analysis of ceramics, lithics, and faunal and botanical remains, the book reveals how specialized land use shaped the economic and social fabric of the region for centuries.
This legacy project stands out not only for its depth but also for its educational significance. As one of the few long-term, community-college-led excavations in the Southwest, the Rooney Ranch project highlights the vital role of student training and local collaboration in archaeological research. With more than seventy data-rich tables and contributions from leading specialists, this volume is an essential resource for archaeologists, historians, and anyone interested in Indigenous land use, desert adaptation, and the enduring legacy of the Hohokam in southern Arizona.
Contributors
Jon Boyd
Chance Copperstone
Michael W. Diehl
Linda M. Gregonis
Lea Mason-Kohlmeyer
Christine H. Virden-Lange
Landscape of the Spirits
Hohokam Rock Art at South Mountain ParkText by Todd W. Bostwick; Photographs by Peter Krocek; Illustrations by Todd W. Bostwick and Peter Krocek
University of Arizona Press, 2002
Todd Bostwick, an archaeologist who has studied the Hohokam for more than twenty years, and Peter Krocek, a professional photographer with a passion for archaeology, have combed the South Mountains to locate nearly all of the ancient petroglyphs found in the canyons and ridges. Their years of learning the landscape and investigating the ancient designs have resulted in a book that explores this wealth of prehistoric rock art within its natural and cultural contexts, revealing what these carvings might mean, how they got there, and when they were made.
Landscape of the Spirits is the first book to cover these ancient images and is one of the most comprehensive treatments of a rock art location ever published. It conveys the range of different rock art elements and compositions found in the South Mountains—animals, humans, and geometric shapes, as well as celestial and calendrical markings at key sites—through accurate descriptions, drawings, and photographs. Interpretations of the petroglyphs are based on Native American ethnographic accounts and consider the most recent theories concerning shamanism and archaeoastronomy.
Written in a simple and accessible style, Landscape of the Spirits is an indispensable volume for anyone exploring the South Mountains, and for rock art enthusiasts everywhere who wish to broaden their understanding of the prehistoric world. It is both an authoritative overview of these ancient wonders and an unprecedented benchmark in southwestern rock art research at a single geographic location.
Religion on the Rocks
Hohokam Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Social TransformationAaron M. Wright
University of Utah Press, 2014
We are nearly all intrigued by the petroglyphs and pictographs of the American Southwest, and we commonly ask what they “mean”. Religion on the Rocks redirects our attention to the equally important matter of what compelled ancient peoples to craft rock art in the first place. To examine this question, Aaron Wright presents a case study from Arizona's South Mountains, an area once flanked by several densely populated Hohokam villages. Synthesizing results from recent archaeological surveys, he explores how the mountains' petroglyphs were woven into the broader cultural landscape and argues that the petroglyphs are relics of a bygone ritual system in which people vied for prestige and power by controlling religious knowledge. The features and strategic placement of the rock art suggest this dimension of Hohokam ritual was participatory and prominent in village life. Around AD 1100, however, petroglyph creation and other ritual practices began to wane, denoting a broad transformation of the Hohokam social world. Wright’s examination of the South Mountains petroglyphs offers a novel narrative of how Hohokam villagers negotiated a concentration of politico-religious authority around platform mounds. Readers will come away with a better understanding of the Hohokam legacy and a greater appreciation for rock art's value to anthropology.
Sending the Spirits Home
The Archaeology of Hohokam Mortuary PracticesGlen E. Rice
University of Utah Press, 2015
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.
Southwestern Pithouse Communities, AD 200-900
Edited by Lisa C. Young and Sarah A. Herr
University of Arizona Press, 2012
Pithouses are the earliest identifiable domestic architecture in many areas of the world, and can provide insights into the origins of communities--a fundamental component of past and present societies. In this book, Lisa Young and Sarah Herr invite archaeologists to explore the development of communities using information from pithouse sites in the American Southwest.
Using regional and topical syntheses to investigate the formation of pithouse communities, contributors to this volume examine the complex relationship between the economic transition to agricultural dependence and the social changes associated with sedentism. They discover that during this transformation, peoples' relationship with the landscape changed in ways that affected their use of space, community organization, and cultural identity.
Employing various theoretical perspectives, these contributions analyze changes in pithouses, site layout, communal architecture, and settlement patterns to investigate the development of place-based communities. Chapters look at community formation strategies in populous regions like the northern San Juan Basin, the southern Colorado Plateau, Mimbres/southern Mogollon, and Hohokam Basin and Range and compare them with social structures in more sparsely populated regions like the northeast Hohokam peripheries, the Arizona Transition Zone, the Cibola region, southeast New Mexico, and the northern Rio Grande. The book also includes thematic discussions of panregional economic change, the complex relationship between house and household, and the demographic shifts accompanying the Neolithic Demographic Transition.
An essential book for students and archaeologists interested in the origins of communities, Southwestern Pithouse Communities is also an important comparative resource for scholars interested in social change during the transition to settled village life.
The Hohokam and Their World
An Exploration of Art and IconographyLinda M. Gregonis and Victoria R. Evans
University of Arizona Press, 2025
Southwest Books of the Year Pick
People traveling around the Sonoran Desert will see the traces of an ancient society, the Hohokam, through the material that they left behind—pottery, shell ornaments, carved stone, and rock imagery.
The Hohokam and Their World offers readers the opportunity to explore how these various images and objects may have been used by the Hohokam, and what the icons and objects may have meant, including how the Hohokam conveyed ideas about water, the Sonoran Desert, the ocean, travel, ancestors, and the cosmos.
Authors Linda M. Gregonis and Victoria R. Evans discuss how artists drew inspiration from their Sonoran Desert homeland and were also influenced by the cultures of western Mexico, the hunter-gatherers of the western desert, the Mogollon to the east, and the Pueblo cultures of the northern Southwest. Unlike traditional archaeological texts, this book takes a holistic approach by examining a diverse range of artistic expressions used by the Hohokam. From intricately crafted pottery to mesmerizing carvings in rock, each medium offers a unique glimpse into the Hohokam’s relationship with their environment and the wider world.
Whether you’re planning a visit to national parks or museums in the Southwest or simply intrigued by ancient civilizations, The Hohokam and Their World is a must-read. The work includes a glossary of key archaeological and anthropological terms, as well as endnotes and an extensive list of references for those who want to dig deeper.
The Hohokam
Desert Farmers and Craftsmen, Excavations at Snaketown, 1964–1965Emil W. Haury
University of Arizona Press, 1976
The Marana Community in the Hohokam World
Suzanne K. Fish
University of Arizona Press, 1992
Tracking Prehistoric Migrations
Pueblo Settlers among the Tonto Basin HohokamJeffery J. Clark
University of Arizona Press, 2001
Puebloan migration was initially limited in scale, resulting in the co-residence of migrants and local groups within a single community. Once this co-residence settlement pattern is reconstructed, relations between the two groups are examined and the short-term and long-term impacts of migration are assessed. The early Classic period is associated with the appearance of the Salado horizon in the Tonto Basin. The results of this research suggest that migration and co-residence was common throughout the basins and valleys in the region defined by the Salado horizon, although each local sequence relates a unique story. The methodological and theoretical implications of Clark's work extend well beyond the Salado and the Southwest and apply to any situation in which the scale and impact of prehistoric migration are contested.
Vapaki
Ancestral O’Odham Platform Mounds of the Sonoran DesertEdited 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.