![]() ![]() This idea makes a lot of sense, as people would have known the marketplace/ballgame schedule, and by extension would have known where to go to get new pots, some cotton, an axe, or whatever else they might need. Dave Abbott, a professor at Arizona State University, has described a marketplace system associated with ballcourts (see Rob Ciaccio’s visualization of this toward the end of Jeff Clark’s post earlier in this blog series). That provided opportunities for visiting and for exchanging commodities in the form of raw materials and finished goods. People watching or participating in the ballgame probably came together from several different villages, perhaps even playing against one another. Ciaccioīallcourts may be found at most of the large villages throughout the region, which works out to one about every three miles in the heavily populated areas. Note the pithouse architecture and the decorated and undecorated pottery. This Hohokam community thrived in the northwest Tucson Basin. These are all visible expressions of identity that would have signaled a person’s membership in the group to outsiders and insiders. This ideology is identifiable in the archaeological record in the materials I mentioned above: buff or brown pottery with red-painted decoration formal secondary cremation burials (people cremated their deceased and then spread the ashes and buried the remains) ornate stone censers or bowls and palettes distinctive projectile point styles (dart and arrow points) marine shell bracelets and armlets and, of course, ballcourts. This Hohokam Ballcourt World originated in the Phoenix Basin and spread rapidly outward, especially to the south and east-to Tucson, Safford, San Pedro, and even the San Simon valley. ![]() ![]() Recognizing that there is variation within groups and understanding some of the mechanisms of cultural influence have direct applications to how we interact with people today.Īrchaeologists associate ballcourts with a widespread ideology that was probably an important aspect of a large-scale group identity during the pre-Classic period. The ancient people who lived in southern Arizona had more group identities than we will ever be able to recognize in the archaeological record. What accounts for that change? What did it mean for the people who were living in the Hohokam World and how they thought about themselves as a group? Vokes Anthropomorphic figurine fragments dating to the Hohokam pre-Classic period (500–1150 CE). Shell bracelets are among a suite of artifacts and other material markers associated with the Hohokam archaeological culture. During much of the Hohokam Classic period (1150–1450), people increasingly buried their deceased (inhumation), built their houses above the ground surface in walled compounds, made zoomorphic (animal) figurines, and built platform mounds as public architecture. During most of the later pre-Classic period (750–1150), people cremated their deceased, built semi-subterranean houses (house-in-pit architecture), made anthropomorphic (human) figurines, and used ballcourts as public architecture. The set of traits that archaeologists (mostly) agree defines the Hohokam archaeological culture includes red-on-buff and red-on-brown decorated pottery, shell jewelry (especially Glycymeris bracelets), stone palettes and censers, plaza-oriented villages, and elaborate irrigation systems. Hohokam is not really “a group of people,” but a suite of material traits found in southern Arizona that archaeologists date from 500 to 1450 CE. This is an important distinction between actual people (the ancestors) and the archaeological culture I’ll describe here. (February 28, 2020)-When contemporary O’odham talk about their ancestors, they use the term Huhugam. ![]()
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