Society and Economy in the Hohokam World: New Evidence and Insights from Canal System 2, Phoenix, Arizona

DOCUMENT Citation Only T Kathleen Henderson.

Recently, Desert Archaeology, Inc. has had opportunity to conduct several archaeological projects for the City of Phoenix west and northwest of the Park of Four Waters, near where the main trunk canals that fed prehistoric Canal System 2 originate and diverge from the Salt River. Seven of these trunk canals have been encountered, along with numerous distribution and lateral canals, water control and catchment structures, seasonal and semi-permanent habitations, and the first irrigated Hohokam...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Hackbarth.

Recent excavations at Pueblo Patricio and La Ciudad have uncovered Pioneer Period components that provide new insight about early Hohokam chronology, settlement, and irrigation in Phoenix. Red Mountain phase occupation at Pueblo Patricio began before the fifth century A.D. with seasonal use of small structures exhibiting highly variable architectural forms and small groupings of structures. A dramatic change in Pueblo Patricio settlement patterns occurred by the middle of the mid-sixth century...

DOCUMENT Full-Text James Heidke. Mary Ownby.

Recent excavations at La Villa recovered a large quantity of pottery that spanned a broad range of time from the Vakhi (ca. A.D. 500-700) to Early Sacaton phase (ca. A.D. 950-1020). Binocular and petrographic analysis of this corpus provides insights into changes in pottery production and distribution in the Phoenix Basin, particularly for Hohokam decorated ceramic types. The results from examining early red-on-gray through red-on-gray/buff sherds indicates those vessels were made with crushed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sophia Kelly.

As one of the largest canal systems in the Phoenix Basin, Canal System 2 likely served as the economic, social, and political center of life for thousands of people residing on the north side of the Salt River. Canal System 2 capitalized on a fortuitous geographic location that permitted irrigation systems and associated fields to extend miles from the river. Despite the large size of the canal infrastructure, the low population density relative to the size of the system indicates that local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas Craig. John Marshall. Brent Kober.

Most studies of the organization of Canal System 2 have taken a "top-down" approach and focused on the degree to which a centralized management structure was required to operate and maintain the canal system. In this paper, we take a "bottom-up" approach and focus on the interests and concerns of the irrigators themselves. Architectural data from several pre-Classic sites along the canal system are examined in an attempt to reconstruct the organizational strategies of multi-household, corporate...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Watkins.

Construction, operation, and maintenance of the extensive prehistoric irrigation systems of the Phoenix Basin required a significant input of labor. The ethnographic record suggests that the organization of agricultural labor among smallholder irrigation farmers can be varied and complex. Hohokam householders had a variety of labor arrangements at their disposal, and were flexible in their application of different strategies to meet changing environmental and cultural conditions. Hohokam...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Glen Rice.

From A.D. 900 to 1400 Hohokam populations frequently used both corporate and household cemeteries within the same village. The practice became more visible following A.D. 1200, when burial was by inhumation in household cemeteries and by cremation in corporate cemeteries. The choice of cemeteries gave households flexibility in dealing with the tension between Hohokam sociopolitical ideology and religious beliefs. Burial in the privacy of household cemeteries served their egalitarian ideology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerry Howard.

A great deal of progress has been made in understanding the physical layout, paleohydraulics and sociopolitical organization of Hohokam Irrigation systems. A relatively comprehensive database now exists for Canal System 2 identifying the location of main canals and the configuration and size of canal channels. Models of the available discharge, or the quantity of water available at points along the main canals, have been constructed. However, our understanding of the sequencing and nature of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua Watts.

While ceramic analysts now report with some confidence where most Phoenix Basin Hohokam pottery was manufactured and where it was eventually discarded, we simply cannot use those two data points on their own to describe the exchange rules and distribution networks that moved pottery from specialist producers to consumers throughout the region. Agent-based modeling methods provide a powerful toolkit for interpreting complex spatial and distributional patterns in the archaeological record, and for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Garraty.

Recent excavations at La Ciudad highlight settlement and socioeconomic changes along the margins of the larger village during the Pre-Classic period, especially the Pioneer-Colonial period transition. High-resolution chronological evidence was obtained based on a combination of radiocarbon, archaeomagnetic, and luminescence assays, including an unprecedented 34 optically and thermally stimulated luminescence assays from ceramic sherds. In addition, 36 archaeomagnetic assays from an early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Lindeman. Connie Darby.

For roughly 400 years after La Villa was founded, around A.D. 500, the village would have been one of the largest in the Phoenix Basin, rivaling, perhaps, the great centers of Snaketown and Grewe on the Middle Gila River. Recent excavations at the site by Desert Archaeology Inc. combined with a series of previous investigations provide intriguing new information about the organization of settlement at Hohokam villages. The work at La Villa has resulted in the identification of two large plazas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Huckleberry.

Recent excavations conducted downstream from Park of Four Waters have provided new evidence of damaging floods within System 2 between AD 1050-1400. Two main canals contain stratigraphic evidence of uncontrolled Salt River. One canal (Hagenstad) contains evidence for two floods, the last one causing the alignment to be abandoned. The other canal (Woodbury's North), contains a flood deposit that filled the channel and led to its abandonment. A combination of ceramic, 14C, and luminescence ages...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Hunt. Scott Ingram.

A food production calendar for the Lower Salt River Valley would amplify our understanding of the largest prehistoric irrigation system in the New World. Hunt and Ingram have assembled a food production calendar for the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Hohokam of the Middle Gila River valley (Kiva 2014). A question is whether this calendar can be extended to the Lower Salt River valley. The environmental variable for which we have the most information is air temperature. The historical records of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Aragon.

It has long been thought that large Hohokam villages, once established, were long-lived and fixed in a single location. La Villa, a pre-Classic Hohokam village on Canal System 2, was one of the largest in the area. It has roots that stretch as far back as the Red Mountain phase and had achieved village status by Vahki times. The village continued to grow through the Pioneer Period, and much of the Colonial Period. Toward the end of the Colonial however, we see a sharp drop-off in both ceramics...