Heḍt

Summary

Iron oxides and other associated minerals (“ochre”) are among the most common pigments used by prehistoric North American populations, particularly in the Hohokam region of central Arizona where they were employed in mortuary rituals, as body paint, and to decorate pottery, basketry, arrows, and pictographs. This paper identifies the wide variety of iron-oxides making up Hohokam, O’odham and Pee Posh red paint (in O'odham, heḍt) and it considers how prehistoric artisans manipulated earthy, rocky, and specular hematite for ritual purposes and craft production. Archaeological and ethnographic specimens are matched to raw material sources using LA ICP-MS and NAA. However, in our attempt to reconstruct the landscapes and practices of iron-oxide utilization, it comes as no surprise that geochemical definitions address only one dimension of a complex field of significance related to the prehistoric and ethnographic utilization of iron oxide. Other cultural aspects are considered in this exploration of O'odham heḍt.

Cite this Record

Heḍt. J Andrew Darling, B. Sunday Eiselt, Rachel Popelka-Filcoff, John Dudgeon. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 403078)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -115.532; min lat: 30.676 ; max long: -102.349; max lat: 42.033 ;