Dimensions of Platform Mound Variability: A Tucson Basin Perspective

Summary

This is an abstract from the "WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Tucson area platform mounds are not architecturally uniform but conform to the broader pattern of rectangular configurations as mound distributions expanded across the Hohokam domain. We believe mound forms incorporate a degree of Hohokam awareness and selectivity with regard to West Mexican modes of the time. We focus on platform mounds in two Tucson central settlements, providing new structural, chronological, and organizational information. Construction and active use of the Marana platform mound terminated prior to Late Classic polychromes. It provides a useful chronological contrast with University Indian Ruin, where construction of a large and a small mound likewise began in the Early Classic period but continued through latest Classic times. Each of the three platform mounds in these two centers are distinctive in some aspects while sharing attributes with other mounds in the Tucson, Phoenix, and Tonto Basins. In considering differences and similarities, no singular interpretational framework appears to account for the full range of architectural variability, nor dictates a singular expression of religious, civic, residential, or bureaucratic activities. Rather, we ask how residents of different Hohokam Classic communities may have differentially conceived and constructed their public architecture to materialize a range of social and communal agendas.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23504