5/30/2023 0 Comments Hohokam art![]() ![]() InterestinglyĮnough, the Akimel O’odham/Pima and the Tohono O’odham/Papago tribes believe to be direct descendants of the Hohokam. Several tribes do not accept the Hohokam to have vanished. ![]() There is not much to note on their abrupt decline other than mentioning their sudden vanishing happened around the same time the Europeans arrived. An unresolved suspicion is their disappearance. An indication of that is, how they changed from cremating their dead to burying the body entirely underground. (Source: Southwest Parks and Monuments Association)īecause Hohokam territory was so extensive, it is suspected they adopted newĬulture along the way. Archaeologist Emil Haury standing in an excavated Hohokam canal. The canals were dug up with wood and stone and were “ten feet deep and thirty feet wide… major prehistoric canals account for about three hundred miles and nearly nine hundred miles of smaller ones within the lower Salt River Valley” (The Short Swift Time of Gods on Earth, 1994). These irrigation canals stretched as far as ten miles from a river’s point of origin to the next village. The Hohokam were able to survive and transform a dusty desert into great farmland by what they are most known for: irrigation canals and ditches. Historians and archaeologists believe that this area first attracted the Hohokam because it was “cooler, and with greater diversity of creatures than the river basins, the South Mountains would have been an attractive place to visit for ancient desert farmers.” Thus the Hohokam gave life to this area, making it “the most populous and agricultural productive valley in the West before 1500 CE” (Bostwick, Todd, archaeologist).Įxtensive Canal System built by the Hohokam and others to divert water from the Gila River. They were known to inhabit South Mountain, which is in close proximity to both the Salt River and Gila River. It is believed they migrated north from Tucson, Arizona to south-central Phoenix, Arizona. ![]() The Hohokam are thought to have been around between 300 B.C. Many historians and archaeologists have researched their disappearance, but still to this day, no one can explain with validity what happened to the Hohokam people. ![]() The name Hohokam is interpreted to mean “those who have vanished” or “those who have gone.” Scholars decided on this name since they could not explain the gap of one hundred years of archaeological record and thus decided they simply disappeared or vanished. If you were raised in Phoenix, or traveled to Arizona, there is a great chance that you’ve heard about an ancient group of people called Hohokam. Hohokam Pottery Demonstration – Fort Lowell Museum Many signs, artifacts, and remains made it apparent that human life once prospered in the Salt River Valley. In what is today’s central Arizona (home to Phoenix), Europeans did not find living humans, only proof of previous settlements and migration. In what is known today as Arizona, they found Native American communities who were thriving on hunting, farming, and advanced trade networks. They weren’t the first settlers, however. Europeans first arrived in present-day America in the sixteenth century. ![]()
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