Hohokam Dry Farming along the South Mountains Bajada, South-Central Arizona

Summary

Hohokam communities who resided alongside the perennial rivers in south-central Arizona are renowned for the massive canals they engineered and operated, representing some of the largest preindustrial irrigation systems in the world. In light of such achievement, dry farming technologies and practices remain a lesser known component of the Hohokam agricultural landscape. This paper takes a close look at recent fieldwork around the South Mountains, an upland setting at the confluence of the Salt and Gila Rivers. Surface survey has identified a range of dry farming features and associated plant processing facilities along the northeast and southwest bajadas. Pollen and phytolith analyses of soils from several of the farming features identified maize and agave as cultivars. They also suggest Hohokam agriculturalists used these facilities to encourage certain economically important wild plants. Macrobotanical analysis of material from associated roasting pits implies some of the agave was processed and possibly consumed on-site, a ritualized practice carried on by historic and modern-day O’odham communities. Diagnostic artifacts associated with the farming features and recovered from within the cooking facilities indicate Hohokam agriculturalists in the Phoenix Basin were dry farming agave, and potentially maize, by AD 950, and possibly as early as AD 750.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 19997