The Hohokam Millenniumone

The Hohokam Millenniumone Suzanne K. Fish and Paul R. Fish Hot, dry regions of the world have produced some extensive ancient settlements we had yet seen.… of the most memorable preindustrial civilizations, Before us, toward the north, east, and south, a long and the southern deserts of Arizona are no excep- series of…house mounds, lay stretched out in seem- tion. The aptly named modern Phoenix, now the ingly endless succession” (fig. 1.2). Entrepreneurs fifth largest city in the United States, arose not from arriving from the eastern United States a few decades the ashes but from the ruins of what was the most earlier had, like Cushing, seen not only house populous and agriculturally productive valley in the mounds but also the former courses of the most West before 1500 CE. When the early Southwestern massive canals ever built in the pre-Columbian archaeologist Frank Hamilton Cushing entered this Americas north of Peru (fig. 1.2; plate 20). They Salt River valley in 1892, he climbed atop an earthen soon reestablished large-scale irrigation by laying out monument in what would become urban Phoenix new canals virtually in the footprints of the prehis- and exclaimed at the discovery of “one of the most toric ones, triggering the growth of the future city. Figure 1.2. Centuries of weathering reduced Hohokam adobe buildings to low “house mounds” of earth. When excavated, the mounds often reveal well-preserved outlines of walls, as in this compound at Casa Grande National Monument excavated in 1908. COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL / The Hohokam Millennium 1 Figure 1.3. Omar Turney, engineer for the city of Phoenix, compiled this map of major Hohokam sites and canal systems in the 2 COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL sarpress.sarweb.org 1920s, on the basis of earlier records and remains still visible at the time. COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL / The Hohokam Millennium 3 Figure 1.4. Partially excavated ball court at Snaketown. The earthen banks of ball courts enclosed the playing field and pro- vided a vantage for spectators during ball games or other public events. The remarkable people whom archaeologists size only by the canals of Andean empires. In addi- call the Hohokam were the builders of the earthen tion to creating unique artifact styles, the Hohokam monuments, adobe houses in profusion, and huge set themselves apart from the ancestral Pueblo, canals that so impressed later visitors to the Salt Mogollon, and other archaeological cultures of the River Valley. From 450 to 1450 CE—the “Hohokam Southwest by the forms of the public buildings in millennium”—the basin at the confluence of the their largest villages. These ball courts (fig. 1.4) and Salt and Gila Rivers formed the core of their geo- platform mounds (plate 9) reflect the characteristic graphic and cultural domain. For 1,000 years the beliefs and community rituals of the Hohokam. Hohokam maintained a recognizable cultural identi- What might it have meant to individuals, ty among the diverse peoples who inhabited other household members, and villagers to have been par- parts of the prehistoric Southwest and adjacent ticipants in the Hohokam cultural sphere? It is diffi- northwestern Mexico. cult to answer this question from the fragments that have survived for archaeologists to examine. Yet the Who Were the Hohokam? fact that they shared the same ways of making and The fragments of buff to brown pottery with red decorating pottery, as well as other canons of style painted designs (plate 5) that litter the low-lying and utilitarian design, tells us that they were in basin floors of southern Arizona are the most dis- close communication with one another and held tinctive and abundant material remains of former common understandings about such matters. That Hohokam residents. Ingenious farmers who they shared crops and farming technologies shows employed an assortment of agricultural strategies to that they turned to the same solutions to meet the grow crops in arid terrain, they ultimately engi- challenges of desert cropping. That they built the neered irrigation networks surpassed in length and same sorts of structures for communal rituals 4 COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL sarpress.sarweb.org implies that a shared set of beliefs guided them. Hohokam, too, might not have been homogeneous But archaeologists cannot determine whether all in all respects. It also complicates the question of the ancient Arizonans they classify as Hohokam how the prehistoric Hohokam are related to the spoke the same language, or whether they consid- succeeding native occupants of the same region ered themselves to be members of the same ethnic (see chapter 15). group or culture. Why these uncertainties over the meaning of How Are the Hohokam Remarkable? being Hohokam? First, the distinctive archaeologi- Among preindustrial societies throughout the cal remains that identify the Hohokam heartland world, the Hohokam hold the distinction of having are spread over an expanse of almost 30,000 square constructed massive canal networks (up to 22 miles in the southern half of Arizona, an area larger miles in length) and irrigated extensive tracts of than the state of South Carolina. The hallmarks of land (up to 70,000 acres) in the absence of state- Hohokam culture are generally bounded by the level government and a corresponding level of upper reaches of the Agua Fria and Verde Rivers to societal complexity. Archaeologists have not yet the north, the Mogollon Rim to the northeast, the identified the graves or dwellings of rulers with Dragoon Mountains to the southeast, the Mexican such obvious high status and power that they border to the south, and the Growler Mountains to could have imperiously resolved the inevitable dis- the west (see map 1). putes that arise among multitudes of water users or Within this far-flung territory, archaeological regulated the huge labor force needed to build and remains have much in common, but they also vary maintain the canals. Nor have archaeologists found in important ways. Inhabitants of some sectors evidence of a developed Hohokam bureaucracy chose only parts of the overall cultural package to that could have provisioned and organized work- incorporate into their lives. For example, in the ers. Yet the canal systems alone clearly required a Tonto Basin, on the northeastern edges of the tremendous amount of coordinated labor. Jerry Hohokam domain, local people using red-on-buff Howard, an expert on Hohokam irrigation, esti- pottery never built ball courts, although they even- mates that it would have taken nearly a million tually erected platform mounds. Migrations of person-days of labor to construct the trunk-lines Hohokam and non-Hohokam groups into the of just one of the Phoenix Basin canal systems (see Tonto Basin contributed to the mixing of cultural fig. 1.3). That figure does not include the additional practices. Where local groups shifted between full effort needed to build secondary lines out to fields, and incidental participation in Hohokam cultural clean out annual buildups of canal sediments, and traditions at different times, the archaeological make repairs after storms and floods. boundaries for the Hohokam shift accordingly (see The Hohokam also constructed earthen ball chapter 12). courts and platform mounds of modestly monu- A second reason for our uncertainties is the mental size relative to those found elsewhere in area’s historic ethnic diversity. When Spanish the ancient world, again without all-powerful explorers arrived in the late seventeenth century, rulers or an established bureaucracy. The place- they found Native Americans with diverse lan- ment of these monuments imparted a unique pat- guages and life-styles all living in the former tern to Hohokam landscapes. Large villages with Hohokam domain. They included groups speaking ball courts or platform mounds appear about every primarily Piman languages (O’odham dialects) in three miles along major canal lines in the Phoenix the central portion, people speaking Yuman lan- Basin and at greater intervals among surrounding guages (Colorado River Yuman to the west and settlements. The largest villages stood at the cen- Yavapai to the north), and groups speaking ters of clusters of smaller settlements, each cluster Athabascan languages (Western Apache) in the forming an organizational unit of population and northern and eastern reaches (see map 2). The territory that Hohokam archaeologists call a “com- diversity of the postcontact era suggests that the munity.” The monuments in the centers served as COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL / The Hohokam Millennium 5 Figure 1.5. The Hohokam of the Preclassic period used carved stone palettes in household and public rituals. staging areas for communal events unduplicated in Hohokam trade for copper bells, iron pyrite mir- outlying settlement zones. This characteristic mode rors, marine shells to make into jewelry, and a few of community organization both accommodated other items that originated south of today’s border. and shaped Hohokam economic, political, and rit- The Hohokam are especially notable for the ual life (see chapter 5). long-term continuity of their lifeways. In compari- Ball courts and platform mounds are unusual son with peoples in other parts of the Southwest, in the US Southwest in their resemblance to the the Hohokam tended toward unusually prolonged monumental forms of Mesoamerica, the heartland residence in place. Once established, some clusters of the Toltec, Aztec, Maya, and other high cultures of dwellings in the largest settlements persisted— centered in what today is Mexico.

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