Hohokam Irrigation Communities: A Study of Internal Structure, External Relationships and Sociopolitical Complexity

Summary

The relationship between large-scale water control projects and the development of sociopolitical complexity is an important theoretical domain in anthropology that can benefit from the diachronic nature of archaeological data. It is argued that irrigation systems are socio-technic entities, designed not only to satisfy engineering requirements but also to accommodate the social groups operating it. This study develops a new theoretical framework for identifying the task groups operating these systems and for modeling sociopolitical organization and complexity. A model is constructed using the irrigation community as the basic analytical unit having an internal organization and external relationships. This model is successfully tested against ethnographic analogs.

The model is applied to the Hohokam, the prehistoric irrigation agriculturists of south-central Arizona. The reconstruction of the internal organization of the irrigation community begins at the level of the household fields, which are identified in detail for the first time. The "command area," consisting of a set of fields receiving water from a common distribution canal and the cooperating task group of farmers operating it, is identified as a major organizational level. The organization of task groups along main canals, branch canals and within village territories represents increasingly higher levels of integration. Finally, the overall structure and organization of the irrigation community is examined.

The exploration of relationships external to the irrigation community encounter traditional arguments concerning the impact of irrigation technology on centralization and sociopolitical complexity. In the Hohokam case, the relationships between irrigation communities are examined diachronically. It is argued that new irrigation communities are constructed in response to demographic expansion until circa AD 1000 when water demand begins to exceed available water resources. The need for communal resource management, in the form of negotiation for water resources, initiated a trajectory of sociopolitical change. These changes are dramatically reflected in the Classic Period, including the introduction of a new ideology linked to platform mound ceremonialism. While not achieving a state level of organization, it is proposed that a hierarchy of corporate leadership roles was established to meet the organizational needs of irrigation in the Salt River Valley.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology (DAHA)

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