Working Hypotheses for the Study of Hohokam Community Complexes

Summary

Over the course of the last seven to ten years, archaeologists working in different parts of the south central desert of Arizona have begun the documentation of Community Complexes. This is a general term for a range of phenomena which lie somewhere on the scale between community patterns and settlement patterns. This is a discussion of settlement structure rather than style, and not all researchers will be comfortable with this orientation. I readily violate and ignore many long standing culture-history distinctions, not to mention state and national boundaries. I argue that these Classic Period Community Complexes represent an infrastructure which was adopted across a wide portion of southern Arizona and New Mexico, cutting across a number of ceramic and architectural traditions, just as in prehistoric times it undoubtedly cut across a number of ethnic and social traditions. What is important is that the people of these southern deserts adopted this infrastructure, and there is a very definite northern limit to its use as an organizational scheme. It is important to understand why this structure developed, how it functioned, why it did not extend further north, and why it ceased to operate at about A.D. 1400.

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• Salt River Project Digital Library

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Salt River Project Cultural Resource Manager

Repository(s): Salt River Project, Tempe, AZ

Prepared By(s): Arizona State University (ASU)

Record Identifiers

Salt River Project Circulation No.(s): 51953

Salt River Project Library Call No.(s): E99.H68R53 1986

Salt River Project Catalog No.(s): 51951

Salt River Project Barcode No.(s): 00030738

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