Post by Okwes on May 23, 2007 10:38:40 GMT -5
THE HOHOKAM
FARMERS OF THE DESERT
by J W Sharp
The Hohokam tradition, which spanned some 1450 years � from early in the
first millennium to A. D. 1450 � seems to have materialized from a void and
vanished into darkness. In between, the Hohokam made the Sonoran Desert
bloom. They raised new standards in artistry, innovation and craftsmanship.
They set their cultural sails to Mesoamerican winds.
The Hohokam Region
Like the Mogollon to the east, the Hohokam occupied a geologically and
ecologically diverse region. At its maximum, their range extended from the
basin and range and the low desert country of northern Sonora and southern
Arizona northward up the famed Mogollon Rim escarpment and onto the Colorado
Plateau�s southwestern edge.
In the basin and range area of southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora,
mountain peaks reach elevations of more than 10,000 feet above sea level,
and valley floors lie at elevations as low as 500 feet above sea level. In
the mountain ranges, which trend from north northwest to south southeast,
spruce and fir dominate the highest elevations. Pines and aspens, pines and
oaks, and oaks and chaparral dominate the intermediate elevations.
Typically, just above the mountain debris slopes, or bajadas, grasses and
then desert scrubs signify the transition from forested lands to the Sonoran
Desert. Along the upper parts of the bajadas, the statuesque columnar
cactus, the saguaro, presides over a diverse plant community which includes,
for instance, acacia, jojoba, triangle-leaf bursage and prickly pears.
Lower, the saguaro dominates growths of mesquite, paloverde, cholla and
bitter condalia. Cottonwood, sycamore, walnut and ash trees grow along
washes. In desert flats, creosote, mesquite and acacia assume preeminent
roles. Annual rainfall in the region ranges from some 30 inches at the
highest elevations to less than 10 inches in the lower elevations. Most of
the rain falls during two periods, mid-winter and mid-summer. Temperatures
in May through September often exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
To the west, in the low desert country which descends to sea level at the
mouth of the Colorado River, small mountain ranges lie like elongated
islands within the desert basins. Plants grow sparsely on the rocky mountain
crests. Small to medium-sized bushes cling tenaciously to scattered
footholds down the slopes and across the desert floor. On the upper reaches
of the bajadas, the saguaro stands guard over barrel cactus, hedgehog
cactus, teddybear cholla, desert agave and desert ironwood. Along the lower
slopes and in the washes, screw-bean mesquite, blue palo verde, bur sage,
ocotillo and cholla characterize the plant community. In the open valley
floors, creosote, mesquites, various cholla species and beavertail cactus
command the landscape. Annual rainfall averages less than four inches, and
summer temperatures frequently reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Along the slopes of the Mogollon Rim (which extends from southeast to
northwest for nearly 200 miles across the heart of Arizona) and the Hohokam
corner of the Colorado Plateau, open ponderosa pine forests with a carpet of
grass stand in powerful contrast to the thorny desert basins to the south.
Because of the higher altitude of the Colorado Plateau � as much as several
thousand feet above the desert basins � annual rainfall averages about 20
inches. Summers stay cooler. Winters can turn fiercely cold.
The land served as both commissary and general store for the Hohokam people.
Wild fruits, seeds, nuts and roots, both from the desert and the mountains,
supplemented Hohokam agricultural crops as food sources. Many desert and
mountain plants yielded materials for construction, tools, weapons,
clothing, containers and campfires. Bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer,
white-tail deer, antelope, rabbits, rodents, turkeys, quail and reptiles
from across the desert and the mountain slopes fell to Hohokam hunters�
arrows, nets or snares. Rock exposures served as quarries for the lithic
resources essential to the manufacture of weapons, stone vessels and tools.
Clay deposits provided the raw material for the crafting of ceramic pots and
figurines.
Hohokam Origins
When the archaeological curtain first lifted to reveal the early Hohokam,
who occupied the south-central Arizona desert region early in the first
millennium, there stood, not the last representatives of a predominantly
nomadic hunting and gathering people, but rather the residents of full
fledged farming and industrial communities. According to George J. Gumerman
and Emil W. Haury in their article, "Prehistory: Hohokam," in the Handbook
of North American Indians: Southwest, the early Hohokam excavated long and
complex canal systems to irrigate their fields of corn, beans, squash and
other crops. They dug wells to tap underground water sources. Their
craftsmen sculpted stone into bowls and trough-like grinding basins; turned
local clays into simple but well-made vessels and figurines; used turquoise
to fashion elaborate mosaics; and made Pacific coast shell into jewelry and
ornaments. Just to confuse archaeologists, the Hohokam also produced an
assemblage of rudimentary artifacts which resembled those of early Mogollon
farmers to the east.
Based on the initial archaeological evidence, the first researchers believed
that colonial pioneers must have imported a more advanced Mesoamerican
tradition to found the Hohokam culture around the beginning of the first
millennium. Based on later archaeological evidence, other researchers �
perhaps most � came to believe that local descendants of ancient hunting and
gathering traditions of the desert responded to Mesoamerican influences and
emerged as the Hohokam. Still other students have suggested that Hohokam
immigrants arrived from some unknown Mesoamerican homeland region to sweep
over the desert hunter/gatherers and set up colonial housekeeping in
southern Arizona sometime in the second half of the first millennium. Some
investigators argue that the Hohokam region became a Mesoamerican frontier
outpost. Others believe that the Hohokam represented an local development
with no more than a Mesoamerican veneer. We see Hohokam origins and their
early development through a foggy window.
The Hohokam Culture, First Phase
In their first phase, which lasted some seven or eight centuries, until
about A. D. 750, the Hohokam established early, small villages primarily in
the vicinity of the confluence of the Gila and Salt Rivers (near modern
Phoenix) and on the flood plains of the Santa Cruz River (near modern
Tucson). Within their villages, they built small clusters of lodges around
open courtyards, with areas set aside for work sites and cemeteries. They
used the work sites for food processing, manufacturing and crafts areas.
They used the cemeteries both for inhumations and for cremations. "Hamlets
made up of several courtyard groupings may have been occupied by about 100
individuals," Linda Cordell said in her Archaeology of the Southwest, Second
Edition.
The earliest Hohokam lived � presumably as extended families � in unusually
large (1000 to 2500 square feet) lodges, which had either rectangular or
square floor plans, often with two narrow entrances and two interior fire
hearths. To raise a structure, the builders scraped away loose desert soil,
often exposing a caliche hardpan which would serve both as foundation and
floor. They erected a framework of primary vertical post roof supports at
the corners and sometimes along the central axis, and they added smaller
vertical support posts along the outer walls. They built a flat or slightly
pitched roof and sloping walls of brush and grass and plastered the
structure with mud or clay. They might have used the largest structures, not
as residences, but as gathering places for the community. They had to
rebuild their structures continually because the available materials and the
construction methods suffered frequent failure. The Hohokam also built small
isolated oval-shaped brush field houses near their crop land, presumably to
serve as temporary lodges during the busy and demanding planting, growing
and harvest seasons. The early structures served as templates for Hohokam
structures throughout the history of the tradition.
In practices that would change little over time, the Hohokam furnished their
lodges with low sleeping platforms, woven sleeping mats, blankets, cooking
pots, eating bowls, storage vessels, baskets, grinding stones, tools and
weaponry. They stored food in granaries or storage compartments just outside
their lodges.
The typical Hohokam family manufactured (or traded for) a surprising
diversity of products. From the fibers of willow and arrowweed, say
archaeologists John P. Andrews and Todd W. Bostwick in their book Desert
Farmers at the River�s Edge: The Hohokam and Pueblo Grande, the Hohokam wove
baskets for "purposes in which heavier or more fragile pottery was
unsuitable." From wood, they made "digging sticks, paddles, handles, and
other objects." They also made wooden wands or staffs, perhaps as symbols of
high status. From the cotton of their fields, they wove "blankets, breech
cloths, skirts and kilts, hats or turbans, and shirts." From fibers of the
agave and other wild plants of the desert, they wove mats, sandals, belts
and ropes. From minerals such as turquoise and argillite, they crafted
jewelry such as lip and nose plugs, beads, pendants, effigies and mosaic
pieces. From shell imported from the beaches of the Gulf of California and
the Pacific coast, they made jewelry and ornaments. From animal bone, they
made tools, whistles and flutes. From smooth stone materials such as
quartzite, obsidian and jasper, they produced elaborately barbed lance and,
later, arrow points, and they made knives, choppers, fleshing tools and farm
implements. From slate, they made plain but distinctive paint palettes. From
coarser stone materials such as vesicular basalt, they fabricated food
milling basins (metates), hand-held grinding stones (manos) as well as
mortars and pestles. (Grit in food processed on the grinding stones wore the
teeth of Hohokam smooth by the time they reached adulthood.) From local
clays, Hohokam potters fashioned an array of thin-walled vessels, plain in
the early centuries, beautifully painted or incised by A. D. 750, and they
fashioned human-shaped ceramic figurines, usually of women, possibly as
fertility icons. (These were similar to figurines manufactured in
Mesoamerica.)
Although we have no direct archaeological evidence for the division of
community responsibilities, we can suspect that Hohokam men cleared
foundation sites and built village structures, excavated irrigation canals
and water wells, opened farm plots, made weapons and tools, hunted game and
perhaps crafted stone and shell jewelry and ornaments. Hohokam women may
have plastered house structures, planted and harvested crops, prepared
meals, woven fabrics, gathered wild plant foods and materials, produced
ceramic pots and figurines and, certainly, cared for young children.
According to Andrews and Bostwick, the Hohokam planted their crops in a
series of earth mounds along irrigation canals and near washes, possibly
with extended families cultivating their own small plots. They may have
raised several crop species, for instance, corn, beans, squash and cotton,
in each mound. They may have produced two crops in their fields each year,
one during the mid-winter rainy season, another during the mid-summer rainy
season. They likely encouraged the growth of useful wild plants such as the
agave, sunflowers and tansy mustard along the margins of their fields or
mounds.
Like the Mogollon people to the east, the Hohokam men, traditional hunters,
took the larger game with spears in the early centuries and with bows and
arrows after A. D. 400 to 500. They probably used nets and snares to trap
smaller game. The women, traditional gatherers and foragers, harvested wild
plant foods and materials both on the desert floor and on the mountain
slopes. From the archaeological evidence, we know that the early Hohokam
traded with Mesoamerican peoples for shells from the sea and for macaws and
parrots from the tropics.
In the second phase of their development, which lasted for about two
centuries, until near the end of the first millennium, the Hohokam people,
in a surge of energy, expanded their geographical range by three to four
times. With a population increase likely attributable to their agricultural
success, Hohokam groups "budded" and migrated eastward up the Gila and Salt
River systems and deeper into the basin and range country; westward down the
Gila River system and deeper into the lower desert area; and northward up
the Agua Fria and Verde River systems into the Mogollon Rim and onto the
Colorado Plateau. At the same time, the Hohokam looked southward,
intensifying their interactions with Mesoamerica.
They built larger villages, some with populations exceeding 1000 people, and
they now clustered their lodges, not around multiple courtyards, but around
a central community courtyard. Reflecting Mesoamerican influences, the
Hohokam began building platform mounds (often sculpted and capped trash
mounds) and excavated ball courts. The platform mounds, typically three- to
10-foot high rectangular structures with plastered flat tops and sloping
slides, measured several hundred to several thousand square feet in area.
The mounds evidently supported a Hohokam-style timber, brush and mud plaster
building, or "temple," and they may have served as a dance or ceremonial
stage. The ball courts, typically eight to 12-foot deep oval-shaped
excavations, would cover one and a half to two times the area of a modern
basketball court. As in Mesoamerica, a Hohokam ball court would have served
as a field for sacred games. As the scenes of communal events, the mounds
and ball courts tended to unify the Hohokam and integrate their lives.
In this period, we begin to see the emergence of a social hierarchy. In the
larger villages, the Hohokam began to give a somewhat more formal
arrangement to lodges, presumably those of higher status residents, near the
central courtyards. They still seemed to give no thought to the layout of
lodges in outlying areas. They cremated and buried high status individuals
with significant grave offerings, for instance, with "figurines, finely
serrated projectile points, and copper bells [from Mesoamerica]" according
to Cordell.
We also see, in the second period of development, a blooming of artistry and
craftsmanship, reflecting new levels of Hohokam creative energies. For
instance, Hohokam artisans expanded their use of imported shell, carving and
grinding pieces into beads, bracelets and pendants, often forming them as
stylized birds, reptiles and animals. They also used shell to produce
intricately designed mosaics. They made long and slender barbed arrow
points, primarily for use as burial offerings. They created paint palettes
with finely carved borders, sometimes with representations of human or
animal figures. They sculpted stone, often with bowl-like cavities, in the
form of animals, birds and reptiles, primarily as funerary offerings.
Increasingly, they used ceramic vessels as a painter�s canvas, rendering
images of dancers, burden carriers, birds and many other motifs. They
produced more realistic clay figurines, adding bits of clay to represent
clothing and painting designs in red or black to represent tattoos. In an
expression of their appreciation for artisanship, the Hohokam traded with
the Mesoamericans for mosaic mirrors, which the skilled craftsmen to the
south created through a laborious process of setting meticulously sliced
pyrite crystals into an adhesive matrix.
Hohokam villagers expanded their irrigation systems, extending canals into
new fields, and they excavated new channels to bring water into their
communities. They even dug canals to deliver water from springs into
cisterns for storage.
Many archaeologists regard the second period as the zenith of the Hohokam
tradition.
In the third period, from about A. D. 975 to 1150, the Hohokam slowed their
rate of expansion, although they did settle new agricultural land in
southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau where they could take advantage of
soils improved by cinder and ash from the Sunset Crater eruption. They
continued to build villages with central plazas. They built lodges which
were proportionally longer than (but otherwise similar to) those of earlier
periods. They accelerated construction of ball courts, evidence of their
rising interest in the sacred games. They relied more on farming,
introducing new crops such as amaranth, and less on hunting and foraging.
Hohokam artisans began exploring new media, especially the painting and
acid-etching of marine shells from the Gulf of California and the Pacific
coast. "Large Laevicardium shells were coated with a pitch in geometric or
animal designs and then immersed in a weak acid solution, probably produced
from the fermented fruit of the saguaro cactus," said Gumerman and Haury.
"Exposed surfaces of the shell were eaten away by the acid leaving the
pitch-protected areas to stand out in relief. Often the shell was then
painted, usually in red and green or blue." Ceramists still made "many types
of small, thick-walled vessels, animal effigies, and footed vessels,"
according to Gumerman and Haury, but they turned from representational life
forms to geometric designs which were "extremely complicated with offset
panels of solids, fringed lines, interlocking scrolls, and other motifs?"
They also began mass producing a buff-colored pottery painted with red
designs, possibly for use as trade wares. They hand-molded small ceramic
heads, probably making dolls of them by attaching them to fiber or textile
"bodies." Stone workers seemed to grow weary of their trade, producing
indifferently made effigies and palettes.
The Hohokam expanded their trade networks over a vast area, which extended
from the Gulf of California and the Pacific Coast eastward to the Texas High
Plains, a span of 1000 miles, and from northern Arizona southward to
Jalisco, a span of 1200 miles. They exchanged the produce from their fields
and the products of their artisans for hides from the plains and for shells,
macaws, exquisitely fashioned pyrite mirrors and copper bells from
Mesoamerica.
They placed special value on copper bells, which they used as funerary
offerings in cremations. "All these bells were of the "tinkler" type, with
suspension eyelets, slotted bases, and pebble or nodule rattles inside the
resonator," said Gordon R. Willey said in An Introduction to American
Archaeology, Volume One. "They were all made by the �lost wax��method of
copper casting�"
Near the end of the third period, about A. D. 1100, the Hohokam found
themselves caught up in the mysterious swirl of transformation and migration
which swept across the puebloan peoples throughout the Southwest and
northern Mexico. For reasons which defy modern comprehension, the Hohokam
abandoned ancient communities and withdrew to their geographic birthplace in
southern Arizona. Change, possibly triggered both by Anasazi migrants from
the Colorado Plateau region and by intensified Mesoamerican influences from
Mexico, characterized the fourth and final period of Hohokam history.
The Hohokam, joined by Anasazi, built new, larger and more concentrated
settlements, some covering a half a square mile in area. They located them
farther from river banks. They enclosed some areas within massive compound
walls, allowing entrance only by ladder or by a single portal. Although they
continued to build traditional lodges of post, brush and mud plastering over
a shallow pit, they began to employ a new form of architecture, on the
natural surface of the desert. Gumerman and Haury said that "�they began to
experiment with new types of wall structures including solid clay walls and
clay walls reinforced with posts� Sometimes, the surface, clay-walled
structures consisted of contiguous rooms�" Late in fourth period, the
Hohokam constructed such structures "on top of massive walled mounds two
meters [about six and one half feet] or more in height. The mounds were
constructed of thick clay walls and supporting interior walls, forming a
honeycomblike structure." Most strikingly, the Hohokam began building
multistoried "great houses," massive structures with walls more than six
feet thick at the base. Surrounded by compound walls, the great houses
served unknown purposes. The village farmers extended canal systems and also
began to experiment with floodwater irrigation, terraces and even dry land
farming.
For some unknown reason, the ferment of change, which stimulated population
concentrations, new construction, new architecture and new agricultural
endeavors, signaled, not a dynamic new age, but rather the twilight, of the
Hohokam tradition. Between A. D. 1400 and 1450, the Hohokam, like puebloan
peoples across the Southwest and northern Mexico, abandoned their
communities. Some apparently dispersed into neighboring regions, perhaps to
surviving or to newly founded pueblos. Stragglers may have remained behind,
diminished in material wealth, technology and artisanship, but giving rise
to the Pima and Papago peoples who greeted the Spanish entradas into
southern Arizona in the sixteenth century.
In their centuries in the desert, the Hohokam left their signature in terms
of their extensive and sophisticated irrigation systems, their extraordinary
artisanship and their Mesoamerican patina.
FARMERS OF THE DESERT
by J W Sharp
The Hohokam tradition, which spanned some 1450 years � from early in the
first millennium to A. D. 1450 � seems to have materialized from a void and
vanished into darkness. In between, the Hohokam made the Sonoran Desert
bloom. They raised new standards in artistry, innovation and craftsmanship.
They set their cultural sails to Mesoamerican winds.
The Hohokam Region
Like the Mogollon to the east, the Hohokam occupied a geologically and
ecologically diverse region. At its maximum, their range extended from the
basin and range and the low desert country of northern Sonora and southern
Arizona northward up the famed Mogollon Rim escarpment and onto the Colorado
Plateau�s southwestern edge.
In the basin and range area of southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora,
mountain peaks reach elevations of more than 10,000 feet above sea level,
and valley floors lie at elevations as low as 500 feet above sea level. In
the mountain ranges, which trend from north northwest to south southeast,
spruce and fir dominate the highest elevations. Pines and aspens, pines and
oaks, and oaks and chaparral dominate the intermediate elevations.
Typically, just above the mountain debris slopes, or bajadas, grasses and
then desert scrubs signify the transition from forested lands to the Sonoran
Desert. Along the upper parts of the bajadas, the statuesque columnar
cactus, the saguaro, presides over a diverse plant community which includes,
for instance, acacia, jojoba, triangle-leaf bursage and prickly pears.
Lower, the saguaro dominates growths of mesquite, paloverde, cholla and
bitter condalia. Cottonwood, sycamore, walnut and ash trees grow along
washes. In desert flats, creosote, mesquite and acacia assume preeminent
roles. Annual rainfall in the region ranges from some 30 inches at the
highest elevations to less than 10 inches in the lower elevations. Most of
the rain falls during two periods, mid-winter and mid-summer. Temperatures
in May through September often exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
To the west, in the low desert country which descends to sea level at the
mouth of the Colorado River, small mountain ranges lie like elongated
islands within the desert basins. Plants grow sparsely on the rocky mountain
crests. Small to medium-sized bushes cling tenaciously to scattered
footholds down the slopes and across the desert floor. On the upper reaches
of the bajadas, the saguaro stands guard over barrel cactus, hedgehog
cactus, teddybear cholla, desert agave and desert ironwood. Along the lower
slopes and in the washes, screw-bean mesquite, blue palo verde, bur sage,
ocotillo and cholla characterize the plant community. In the open valley
floors, creosote, mesquites, various cholla species and beavertail cactus
command the landscape. Annual rainfall averages less than four inches, and
summer temperatures frequently reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Along the slopes of the Mogollon Rim (which extends from southeast to
northwest for nearly 200 miles across the heart of Arizona) and the Hohokam
corner of the Colorado Plateau, open ponderosa pine forests with a carpet of
grass stand in powerful contrast to the thorny desert basins to the south.
Because of the higher altitude of the Colorado Plateau � as much as several
thousand feet above the desert basins � annual rainfall averages about 20
inches. Summers stay cooler. Winters can turn fiercely cold.
The land served as both commissary and general store for the Hohokam people.
Wild fruits, seeds, nuts and roots, both from the desert and the mountains,
supplemented Hohokam agricultural crops as food sources. Many desert and
mountain plants yielded materials for construction, tools, weapons,
clothing, containers and campfires. Bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer,
white-tail deer, antelope, rabbits, rodents, turkeys, quail and reptiles
from across the desert and the mountain slopes fell to Hohokam hunters�
arrows, nets or snares. Rock exposures served as quarries for the lithic
resources essential to the manufacture of weapons, stone vessels and tools.
Clay deposits provided the raw material for the crafting of ceramic pots and
figurines.
Hohokam Origins
When the archaeological curtain first lifted to reveal the early Hohokam,
who occupied the south-central Arizona desert region early in the first
millennium, there stood, not the last representatives of a predominantly
nomadic hunting and gathering people, but rather the residents of full
fledged farming and industrial communities. According to George J. Gumerman
and Emil W. Haury in their article, "Prehistory: Hohokam," in the Handbook
of North American Indians: Southwest, the early Hohokam excavated long and
complex canal systems to irrigate their fields of corn, beans, squash and
other crops. They dug wells to tap underground water sources. Their
craftsmen sculpted stone into bowls and trough-like grinding basins; turned
local clays into simple but well-made vessels and figurines; used turquoise
to fashion elaborate mosaics; and made Pacific coast shell into jewelry and
ornaments. Just to confuse archaeologists, the Hohokam also produced an
assemblage of rudimentary artifacts which resembled those of early Mogollon
farmers to the east.
Based on the initial archaeological evidence, the first researchers believed
that colonial pioneers must have imported a more advanced Mesoamerican
tradition to found the Hohokam culture around the beginning of the first
millennium. Based on later archaeological evidence, other researchers �
perhaps most � came to believe that local descendants of ancient hunting and
gathering traditions of the desert responded to Mesoamerican influences and
emerged as the Hohokam. Still other students have suggested that Hohokam
immigrants arrived from some unknown Mesoamerican homeland region to sweep
over the desert hunter/gatherers and set up colonial housekeeping in
southern Arizona sometime in the second half of the first millennium. Some
investigators argue that the Hohokam region became a Mesoamerican frontier
outpost. Others believe that the Hohokam represented an local development
with no more than a Mesoamerican veneer. We see Hohokam origins and their
early development through a foggy window.
The Hohokam Culture, First Phase
In their first phase, which lasted some seven or eight centuries, until
about A. D. 750, the Hohokam established early, small villages primarily in
the vicinity of the confluence of the Gila and Salt Rivers (near modern
Phoenix) and on the flood plains of the Santa Cruz River (near modern
Tucson). Within their villages, they built small clusters of lodges around
open courtyards, with areas set aside for work sites and cemeteries. They
used the work sites for food processing, manufacturing and crafts areas.
They used the cemeteries both for inhumations and for cremations. "Hamlets
made up of several courtyard groupings may have been occupied by about 100
individuals," Linda Cordell said in her Archaeology of the Southwest, Second
Edition.
The earliest Hohokam lived � presumably as extended families � in unusually
large (1000 to 2500 square feet) lodges, which had either rectangular or
square floor plans, often with two narrow entrances and two interior fire
hearths. To raise a structure, the builders scraped away loose desert soil,
often exposing a caliche hardpan which would serve both as foundation and
floor. They erected a framework of primary vertical post roof supports at
the corners and sometimes along the central axis, and they added smaller
vertical support posts along the outer walls. They built a flat or slightly
pitched roof and sloping walls of brush and grass and plastered the
structure with mud or clay. They might have used the largest structures, not
as residences, but as gathering places for the community. They had to
rebuild their structures continually because the available materials and the
construction methods suffered frequent failure. The Hohokam also built small
isolated oval-shaped brush field houses near their crop land, presumably to
serve as temporary lodges during the busy and demanding planting, growing
and harvest seasons. The early structures served as templates for Hohokam
structures throughout the history of the tradition.
In practices that would change little over time, the Hohokam furnished their
lodges with low sleeping platforms, woven sleeping mats, blankets, cooking
pots, eating bowls, storage vessels, baskets, grinding stones, tools and
weaponry. They stored food in granaries or storage compartments just outside
their lodges.
The typical Hohokam family manufactured (or traded for) a surprising
diversity of products. From the fibers of willow and arrowweed, say
archaeologists John P. Andrews and Todd W. Bostwick in their book Desert
Farmers at the River�s Edge: The Hohokam and Pueblo Grande, the Hohokam wove
baskets for "purposes in which heavier or more fragile pottery was
unsuitable." From wood, they made "digging sticks, paddles, handles, and
other objects." They also made wooden wands or staffs, perhaps as symbols of
high status. From the cotton of their fields, they wove "blankets, breech
cloths, skirts and kilts, hats or turbans, and shirts." From fibers of the
agave and other wild plants of the desert, they wove mats, sandals, belts
and ropes. From minerals such as turquoise and argillite, they crafted
jewelry such as lip and nose plugs, beads, pendants, effigies and mosaic
pieces. From shell imported from the beaches of the Gulf of California and
the Pacific coast, they made jewelry and ornaments. From animal bone, they
made tools, whistles and flutes. From smooth stone materials such as
quartzite, obsidian and jasper, they produced elaborately barbed lance and,
later, arrow points, and they made knives, choppers, fleshing tools and farm
implements. From slate, they made plain but distinctive paint palettes. From
coarser stone materials such as vesicular basalt, they fabricated food
milling basins (metates), hand-held grinding stones (manos) as well as
mortars and pestles. (Grit in food processed on the grinding stones wore the
teeth of Hohokam smooth by the time they reached adulthood.) From local
clays, Hohokam potters fashioned an array of thin-walled vessels, plain in
the early centuries, beautifully painted or incised by A. D. 750, and they
fashioned human-shaped ceramic figurines, usually of women, possibly as
fertility icons. (These were similar to figurines manufactured in
Mesoamerica.)
Although we have no direct archaeological evidence for the division of
community responsibilities, we can suspect that Hohokam men cleared
foundation sites and built village structures, excavated irrigation canals
and water wells, opened farm plots, made weapons and tools, hunted game and
perhaps crafted stone and shell jewelry and ornaments. Hohokam women may
have plastered house structures, planted and harvested crops, prepared
meals, woven fabrics, gathered wild plant foods and materials, produced
ceramic pots and figurines and, certainly, cared for young children.
According to Andrews and Bostwick, the Hohokam planted their crops in a
series of earth mounds along irrigation canals and near washes, possibly
with extended families cultivating their own small plots. They may have
raised several crop species, for instance, corn, beans, squash and cotton,
in each mound. They may have produced two crops in their fields each year,
one during the mid-winter rainy season, another during the mid-summer rainy
season. They likely encouraged the growth of useful wild plants such as the
agave, sunflowers and tansy mustard along the margins of their fields or
mounds.
Like the Mogollon people to the east, the Hohokam men, traditional hunters,
took the larger game with spears in the early centuries and with bows and
arrows after A. D. 400 to 500. They probably used nets and snares to trap
smaller game. The women, traditional gatherers and foragers, harvested wild
plant foods and materials both on the desert floor and on the mountain
slopes. From the archaeological evidence, we know that the early Hohokam
traded with Mesoamerican peoples for shells from the sea and for macaws and
parrots from the tropics.
In the second phase of their development, which lasted for about two
centuries, until near the end of the first millennium, the Hohokam people,
in a surge of energy, expanded their geographical range by three to four
times. With a population increase likely attributable to their agricultural
success, Hohokam groups "budded" and migrated eastward up the Gila and Salt
River systems and deeper into the basin and range country; westward down the
Gila River system and deeper into the lower desert area; and northward up
the Agua Fria and Verde River systems into the Mogollon Rim and onto the
Colorado Plateau. At the same time, the Hohokam looked southward,
intensifying their interactions with Mesoamerica.
They built larger villages, some with populations exceeding 1000 people, and
they now clustered their lodges, not around multiple courtyards, but around
a central community courtyard. Reflecting Mesoamerican influences, the
Hohokam began building platform mounds (often sculpted and capped trash
mounds) and excavated ball courts. The platform mounds, typically three- to
10-foot high rectangular structures with plastered flat tops and sloping
slides, measured several hundred to several thousand square feet in area.
The mounds evidently supported a Hohokam-style timber, brush and mud plaster
building, or "temple," and they may have served as a dance or ceremonial
stage. The ball courts, typically eight to 12-foot deep oval-shaped
excavations, would cover one and a half to two times the area of a modern
basketball court. As in Mesoamerica, a Hohokam ball court would have served
as a field for sacred games. As the scenes of communal events, the mounds
and ball courts tended to unify the Hohokam and integrate their lives.
In this period, we begin to see the emergence of a social hierarchy. In the
larger villages, the Hohokam began to give a somewhat more formal
arrangement to lodges, presumably those of higher status residents, near the
central courtyards. They still seemed to give no thought to the layout of
lodges in outlying areas. They cremated and buried high status individuals
with significant grave offerings, for instance, with "figurines, finely
serrated projectile points, and copper bells [from Mesoamerica]" according
to Cordell.
We also see, in the second period of development, a blooming of artistry and
craftsmanship, reflecting new levels of Hohokam creative energies. For
instance, Hohokam artisans expanded their use of imported shell, carving and
grinding pieces into beads, bracelets and pendants, often forming them as
stylized birds, reptiles and animals. They also used shell to produce
intricately designed mosaics. They made long and slender barbed arrow
points, primarily for use as burial offerings. They created paint palettes
with finely carved borders, sometimes with representations of human or
animal figures. They sculpted stone, often with bowl-like cavities, in the
form of animals, birds and reptiles, primarily as funerary offerings.
Increasingly, they used ceramic vessels as a painter�s canvas, rendering
images of dancers, burden carriers, birds and many other motifs. They
produced more realistic clay figurines, adding bits of clay to represent
clothing and painting designs in red or black to represent tattoos. In an
expression of their appreciation for artisanship, the Hohokam traded with
the Mesoamericans for mosaic mirrors, which the skilled craftsmen to the
south created through a laborious process of setting meticulously sliced
pyrite crystals into an adhesive matrix.
Hohokam villagers expanded their irrigation systems, extending canals into
new fields, and they excavated new channels to bring water into their
communities. They even dug canals to deliver water from springs into
cisterns for storage.
Many archaeologists regard the second period as the zenith of the Hohokam
tradition.
In the third period, from about A. D. 975 to 1150, the Hohokam slowed their
rate of expansion, although they did settle new agricultural land in
southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau where they could take advantage of
soils improved by cinder and ash from the Sunset Crater eruption. They
continued to build villages with central plazas. They built lodges which
were proportionally longer than (but otherwise similar to) those of earlier
periods. They accelerated construction of ball courts, evidence of their
rising interest in the sacred games. They relied more on farming,
introducing new crops such as amaranth, and less on hunting and foraging.
Hohokam artisans began exploring new media, especially the painting and
acid-etching of marine shells from the Gulf of California and the Pacific
coast. "Large Laevicardium shells were coated with a pitch in geometric or
animal designs and then immersed in a weak acid solution, probably produced
from the fermented fruit of the saguaro cactus," said Gumerman and Haury.
"Exposed surfaces of the shell were eaten away by the acid leaving the
pitch-protected areas to stand out in relief. Often the shell was then
painted, usually in red and green or blue." Ceramists still made "many types
of small, thick-walled vessels, animal effigies, and footed vessels,"
according to Gumerman and Haury, but they turned from representational life
forms to geometric designs which were "extremely complicated with offset
panels of solids, fringed lines, interlocking scrolls, and other motifs?"
They also began mass producing a buff-colored pottery painted with red
designs, possibly for use as trade wares. They hand-molded small ceramic
heads, probably making dolls of them by attaching them to fiber or textile
"bodies." Stone workers seemed to grow weary of their trade, producing
indifferently made effigies and palettes.
The Hohokam expanded their trade networks over a vast area, which extended
from the Gulf of California and the Pacific Coast eastward to the Texas High
Plains, a span of 1000 miles, and from northern Arizona southward to
Jalisco, a span of 1200 miles. They exchanged the produce from their fields
and the products of their artisans for hides from the plains and for shells,
macaws, exquisitely fashioned pyrite mirrors and copper bells from
Mesoamerica.
They placed special value on copper bells, which they used as funerary
offerings in cremations. "All these bells were of the "tinkler" type, with
suspension eyelets, slotted bases, and pebble or nodule rattles inside the
resonator," said Gordon R. Willey said in An Introduction to American
Archaeology, Volume One. "They were all made by the �lost wax��method of
copper casting�"
Near the end of the third period, about A. D. 1100, the Hohokam found
themselves caught up in the mysterious swirl of transformation and migration
which swept across the puebloan peoples throughout the Southwest and
northern Mexico. For reasons which defy modern comprehension, the Hohokam
abandoned ancient communities and withdrew to their geographic birthplace in
southern Arizona. Change, possibly triggered both by Anasazi migrants from
the Colorado Plateau region and by intensified Mesoamerican influences from
Mexico, characterized the fourth and final period of Hohokam history.
The Hohokam, joined by Anasazi, built new, larger and more concentrated
settlements, some covering a half a square mile in area. They located them
farther from river banks. They enclosed some areas within massive compound
walls, allowing entrance only by ladder or by a single portal. Although they
continued to build traditional lodges of post, brush and mud plastering over
a shallow pit, they began to employ a new form of architecture, on the
natural surface of the desert. Gumerman and Haury said that "�they began to
experiment with new types of wall structures including solid clay walls and
clay walls reinforced with posts� Sometimes, the surface, clay-walled
structures consisted of contiguous rooms�" Late in fourth period, the
Hohokam constructed such structures "on top of massive walled mounds two
meters [about six and one half feet] or more in height. The mounds were
constructed of thick clay walls and supporting interior walls, forming a
honeycomblike structure." Most strikingly, the Hohokam began building
multistoried "great houses," massive structures with walls more than six
feet thick at the base. Surrounded by compound walls, the great houses
served unknown purposes. The village farmers extended canal systems and also
began to experiment with floodwater irrigation, terraces and even dry land
farming.
For some unknown reason, the ferment of change, which stimulated population
concentrations, new construction, new architecture and new agricultural
endeavors, signaled, not a dynamic new age, but rather the twilight, of the
Hohokam tradition. Between A. D. 1400 and 1450, the Hohokam, like puebloan
peoples across the Southwest and northern Mexico, abandoned their
communities. Some apparently dispersed into neighboring regions, perhaps to
surviving or to newly founded pueblos. Stragglers may have remained behind,
diminished in material wealth, technology and artisanship, but giving rise
to the Pima and Papago peoples who greeted the Spanish entradas into
southern Arizona in the sixteenth century.
In their centuries in the desert, the Hohokam left their signature in terms
of their extensive and sophisticated irrigation systems, their extraordinary
artisanship and their Mesoamerican patina.