Jannelle Weakly did her usual superb photography.Īntieau, John M. I am grateful to Henry Wallace for comments on some of the type identifications. I thank Alan Ferg for encouraging (and prodding) me to write these notes on some of the pottery vessels and sherds in the Norton Allen Collection. Many closely rcsemble the depictions found at Snaketown, and it is quite possible that some of the pots found in Gila Bend sites were traded into the area from Snaketown or other sites in the Phoenix Basin. Presented here are most of the whole vessels from the Norton Allen Collection showing life forms, and a selection of sherds that show other variations. Less common are depictions of humans and animals, with recognizable depictions of plants being almost unknown. Want to learn more? Explore the major concepts, places, cultures, and themes that Southwestern archaeologists are exploring today in our Introduction to Southwestern Archaeology.The vast majority of Hohokam painted pottery is decorated with a profusion of geometric designs, both curvilincar and rectilinear. European settlers actually cleared out and reused many Hohokam canals hundreds of years later.

There are more than 500 miles of documented canals in the region, representing the largest-scale irrigation in North America. Hohokam Art - Etsy Check out our hohokam art selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. Their vast canal networks include some canals more than 20 miles long. People in the Hohokam region employed massive-scale irrigation farming. Throughout their history, potters in the Hohokam region produced brown (in the Tucson Basin area) and buff (in the Phoenix Basin area) ware pottery, sometimes painted with geometric designs or life forms in red. Compound B at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument has two platform mounds. Larger villages then had a different kind of central construction: large platform mounds, often with structures on top, that appear to have been the place for religious and political activities. Later in time, after about 1150 or 1200 CE, people in the Hohokam region began building their houses as aboveground compounds within a walled courtyard. People used these for gatherings and for a ball game that was probably similar to those played among Mesoamerican societies. Between about 8 CE, many villages also had large earthen constructions that archaeologists identify as ballcourts. Archaeologists find these dwellings in sets of three or four around small courtyards. CiaccioĮarly Hohokam settlements consist of clusters of shallow pithouses. The Hohokam are probably most famous for their. During this time, they achieved remarkable successes.

1450, barely 90 years before Spanish explorers arrived in the Southwest. Their cultural pattern existed from the first years A.D. Note the pithouse architecture and the decorated and undecorated pottery. The Hohokam were, in the words of archaeologist Emil Haury, masters of the desert. This Hohokam community thrived in the northwest Tucson Basin. People who resided in the Hohokam (ho-ho-kahm) region were among the ancestors of contemporary southern desert populations, such as the O’odham, as well as Pueblo populations and perhaps other populations in northern Mexico.

Hohokam art