Hohokam

According to the National Park Service, the word Hohokam is borrowed from the O'odham language, and is used by archaeologists to identify groups of people who lived in the Sonoran Desert.

[16] Many features of earlier Hohokam domestic architecture, such as rectangular pithouses, were apparently transplanted relatively intact from the Tucson basin during the early Formative Period.

Throughout the Hohokam Chronological Sequence, individual homes were usually excavated approximately 40 cm (16 in) below ground level, had plastered or compacted floors of 12 to 35 m2, and had a bowl-shaped, clay-lined hearth near the wall-entry.

By the late Formative and Preclassic periods, the Hohokam cremated their dead, very similar to the traditions documented among the historic Patayan culture to the west along the Lower Colorado River.

Within these regions, the basic period designations are retained; however, local phases are often used to note significant differences, and, to some extent, represents communities influenced by their Ancestral Puebloan and Mogollon neighbors.

[full citation needed] Crop, agricultural skill, and cultural refinements increased between 300 and 500 CE as the Hohokam acquired a new group of cultivated plants, presumably from trade with peoples in the area of modern Mexico.

These included large, rectangular, adobe-walled compounds with platform mounds and great houses, such as the example found at the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.

Vast internal changes, the rejection of the Hohokam ballcourt system, and the peripheries' displaying overt indications of belligerence towards the core area, followed by their cultural realignment, suggests that this was a very important episode.

These early pitrooms were built of perishable material covered with a thick adobe plaster, and the basal portion of the interior walls was often lined with upright slabs.

Other important developments were the significant increased procurement and manufacture of red ware, and the near-universal use of inhumation burial in the area north of the Gila River, both similar to the practices and traditions used by the historic O'odham.

[full citation needed] The earliest sedentary agricultural settlements in central Arizona date from 1000 to 500 BCE, yet the first ceramics appear just before the Hohokam rise in 300 CE.

Hohokam Plain and Red wares were primarily tempered with a variety of materials including micaceous, phyllite, or Squaw Peak schist, as well as granite, quartz, quartzite, and arkosic sands.

However, the clays tended to be of a finer quality and were tempered with caliche and limited amounts of very finely ground micaceous schist and small particles of vegetative material.

Including outlines of archaeological exploration, provided below are brief descriptions of the largest and most important prehistoric villages, towns, and cities found within the so-called Hohokam core area.

[full citation needed] Snaketown was the archetypical Preclassic period settlement and preeminent community centered within the core of the Hohokam culture area.

[full citation needed] Altogether, the greater Grewe-Casa Grande Site represented the largest Hohokam community located within the middle Gila River valley.

Overall, the greater Grewe-Casa Grande archaeological site covered about 900 acres (3.6 km2), centered on State Route 87 and immediately north of the modern city of Coolidge, Arizona.

Eusebio Francesco Chini (Father Kino) arrived in the middle Gila River valley in 1694 to find the monumental great house abandoned and already in a state of decay and decomposition.

[full citation needed] Adolph Bandelier provided one of the first detailed archaeological maps and descriptions of Classic period architecture at the central locus, or Compound A, of the Casa Grande site, in 1884.

He also defined and excavated portions of Sacaton 9:6 (GP), an adobe-walled compound situated on the extreme edge of the Casa Grande site, east of State Route 87, near the current entrance to the monument.

Relatively large-scale excavations were carried out between 1930 and 1931, by Van Bergen-Los Angeles Museum Expedition under the direction of Arthur Woodward and Irwin Hayden.

The excavation of 15 pithouses, three pits, 32 burials, and portions of four trash mounds demonstrated the presence of significantly large late Preclassic and early Classic period components within the area covered by the monument.

Yet, by far the largest and most comprehensive archaeological endeavor was conducted by Northland Research Inc., from 1995 to 1997, on a 13-acre (53,000 m2) parcel within portions of the Casa Grande, Grewe, and Horvath sites that paralleled State Routes 87 and 287.

This project was directed by Douglass Craig, and resulted in the identification and/or excavation of 247 pithouses, 24 pitrooms, 866 pits, 11 canal alignments, a ballcourt, and portions of four adobe-walled compounds, as well as the recovery of 158 burials and over 400,000 artifacts.

Regardless of its size, complexity, and significance along the middle Gila River, this settlement never seemed to have attained the status enjoyed by Snaketown, as it pertained to the Hohokam culture, per se.

[full citation needed] Today, about 60% of the Grewe-Casa Grande site has been either destroyed due to agricultural and commercial development, excavated, or remains relatively intact buried under fields used to grow cotton.

Visitors can enjoy an interpretative center, walk among the stabilized ruins of Compound A, and closely view the great house, which has been protected since 1932 from the elements by a distinctively modern-looking roof.

[full citation needed] At its peak in the late Preclassic and early Classic periods, this settlement may have consisted of as many as 20 discrete residential areas and covered several hundred acres.

Los Hornos appears to have started around 400 CE, as a small cluster of rectangular pithouses situated on the extreme western edge of the site, west of Priest Dr and south of US 60.

The detailed excavation of 50 Preclassic period pithouses in the area located immediately south of US 60 and east of Priest Dr, provided invaluable information concerning residential architecture and the functional use of interior space.