The Social Use and Value of Blue-Green Stone Mosaics at Sites within Canal System 2, Phoenix Basin, Hohokam Regional System

The occurrence of nonlocal objects, raw materials, and ideas in the southwestern United States (U.S. SW) has long been recognized as evidence of interaction between prehispanic peoples of this region and those of greater Mesoamerica. Although many archaeologists have analyzed the directionality and potential means by which these objects and concepts moved across the landscape, few have assessed the degree to which Mesoamerican practices and traditional assemblages remained intact as the artifacts and ideas moved farther from their places of origin. The current study analyzes the distribution and deposition of blue-green stone mosaics, a craft technology that was well established in Mesoamerica by the Late Preclassic period (300 BC–AD 250) and spread to the U.S. SW by the start of the Hohokam Pioneer period (AD 475). We assess the spatial distribution, contextual deposition, and morphology of mosaics at sites within Hohokam Canal System 2, located in the Phoenix Basin of Arizona. We use these data to infer mosaics’ social value and function within Hohokam social structure. Analyses suggest that, although the technology of mosaic making may have originated in Mesoamerica, the contexts and ways in which mosaics were used in the Hohokam regional system were decidedly Hohokam.

Classic Period Hohokam

This chapter discusses the Hohokam Classic Period (ca. 1200–1450 ce) in southern Arizona. Two perspectives are presented for observed archaeological patterns. One perspective is from the Phoenix Basin center, a densely populated region on a trajectory of overexploitation and decline throughout much of the interval, despite the construction of massive irrigation works and architectural buildings that left impressive ruins. The other perspective is from the outlying valleys to the north and east of Phoenix that had much lower population densities. Here intense interaction between local majorities, and small, but socially resilient, Kayenta immigrants from northeast Arizona led to the development of an inclusive Salado ideology that transcended the identities of both groups. This ideology ultimately penetrated the Phoenix Basin when the latter was on the verge of collapse. This collapse was so complete that few pre-contact archaeological sites have been identified in the Hohokam region after 1450 ce.

ANCESTRAL O'ODHAM: AKIMEL O'ODHAM CULTURAL TRADITIONS AND THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD

Archaeologists have long used the prehistoric inhabitants of the Phoenix Basin in south-central Arizona as an example of a failed or collapsed society, and most prehistorians still assert that Hohokam material culture patterns ended at the close of the Classic period (circa A.D. 1150–1450). Although researchers are increasingly recognizing connections between prehistoric and modern indigenous people, little consensus exists regarding the cause or causes of the dramatic alterations in material culture patterns that occurred in the region. Most archaeologists who have studied the changes at the end of the Classic period, however, have not fully considered the implications of previous and subsequent conditions, including similar and seemingly abrupt shifts in cultural practices that occurred both before and after this time. This paper uses Akimel O'Odham (i.e., Pima) cultural knowledge to contextualize the “Hohokam Collapse.” We show that this perspective of culture history explains the relationship between prehistoric and historic populations and answers many of the long-standing questions regarding cultural variation in the Phoenix Basin.

Exchange Network Topologies and Agent-Based Modeling: Economies of the Sedentary-Period Hohokam

The origins and evolution of market-based economies remain poorly understood in part because the data from nascent markets are scarce and methods available to archaeologists are underdeveloped. Studying how markets evolved is vital for understanding the origins of a process that dominates modern economies around the world and has significant policy implications. We show how refining abstract models of exchange networks with household-scale distributional analyses and regional-scale computational agent-based models (ABMs) can lead to new understandings about the organization of a prehistoric economy. The Sedentary-period Hohokam of central Arizona—particularly for the middle Sacaton phase (A.D. 1020–1100)—have been identified as a middle-range society that traded pottery in a market-based economy, but the structure of their exchange networks is not well understood. We analyzed ceramic data from recent archaeological excavations at two sites in the Phoenix Basin using new network-inspired distributional approaches to evaluate exchange systems. Initial results were then assessed using simulated data generated by an ABM of Hohokam exchange networks. Final results indicated that the best-fitting ABM model configurations were those consistent with openly accessed market-based exchange and contributed new insights into the influence of natural landscape barriers such as the Salt River on exchange in the Phoenix Basin.

Revisiting Hohokam Paleodemography

Archaeological evidence documents apparent depopulation of the Hohokam region of Southern Arizona at the end of the Classic period (A.D. 1150-1450). Major population centers were no longer occupied, and many distinctive material culture traits associated with the Hohokam tradition seem to disappear. Proposed explanations include migration, dispersion of the population into less archaeologically visible settlements, and wholesale population decline. The latter hypothesis is attractive partly because of a seminal study of paleodemography and health at the Classic-period site of Pueblo Grande in the Phoenix Basin. That study suggested that the population was not sustainable due to very low life expectancy, a very high dependency ratio of juveniles to adults, and other indicators of biological stress. A hazards analysis of the published demographic data reveals life expectancy at birth in the expected range for prehistoric populations with no evidence of a dependency crisis. Population decline at the end of the Classic period is more likely explained by reduced fertility than by increased mortality. Birth rates are sensitive to cultural and economic forces, and we should look beyond health factors in trying to account for the disappearance of Hohokam traditions.

Hohokam to Akimel O’Odham: Obsidian Acquisition at the Historic Period Sacate Site (GR-909), Gila River Indian Community, Arizona

Obsidian provenance studies within the Phoenix Basin of south-central Arizona have become increasingly comprehensive during the last four decades. As a result, broad regional and temporal trends have been defined regarding Preclassic (ca. A.D. 650–1150) and Classic period (ca.A.D. 1150–1450) socioeconomic interactions in the Hohokam core area. However, Historic period patterns are still poorly understood, and these data are essential for understanding the relationship between the prehistoric Hohokam and historical Akimel O’Odham. The association between the Akimel O’Odham and Hohokam has been debated since Euro-Americans first visited the area in the late 1600s, yet this issue is still not fully resolved. This article presents analyses of historical obsidian from the Sacate site that suggest that long-term trends in cultural patterns within the Phoenix Basin continued unbroken into the Historic period. These continuities provide another line of evidence that the Akimel O’Odham are the direct cultural descendants of the Hohokam.

Bird on Fire

Phoenix, Arizona is one of America's fastest growing metropolitan regions. It is also its least sustainable one, sprawling over a thousand square miles, with a population of four and a half million, minimal rainfall, scorching heat, and an insatiable appetite for unrestrained growth and unrestricted property rights. In Bird on Fire, eminent social and cultural analyst Andrew Ross focuses on the prospects for sustainability in Phoenix--a city in the bull's eye of global warming--and also the obstacles that stand in the way. Most authors writing on sustainable cities look at places like Portland, Seattle, and New York that have excellent public transit systems and relatively high density. But Ross contends that if we can't change the game in fast-growing, low-density cities like Phoenix, the whole movement has a major problem. Drawing on interviews with 200 influential residents--from state legislators, urban planners, developers, and green business advocates to civil rights champions, energy lobbyists, solar entrepreneurs, and community activists--Ross argues that if Phoenix is ever to become sustainable, it will occur more through political and social change than through technological fixes. Ross explains how Arizona's increasingly xenophobic immigration laws, science-denying legislature, and growth-at-all-costs business ethic have perpetuated social injustice and environmental degradation. But he also highlights the positive changes happening in Phoenix, in particular the Gila River Indian Community's successful struggle to win back its water rights, potentially shifting resources away from new housing developments to producing healthy local food for the people of the Phoenix Basin. Ross argues that this victory may serve as a new model for how green democracy can work, redressing the claims of those who have been aggrieved in a way that creates long-term benefits for all. Bird on Fire offers a compelling take on one of the pressing issues of our time--finding pathways to sustainability at a time when governments are dismally failing their responsibility to address climate change.

Living Downstream

In neighborhoods well to the north of the Salt River channel, Phoenix’s artist communities and downtown advocates fought for mixed-use zoning that would allow places of residence to coexist with commercial storefronts. South of the river, where housing was placed in close proximity to dirty industrial facilities, mixed land use had an altogether different meaning. Residents in South Phoenix, long regarded as the city’s human and natural sacrifice zone, were fighting for the right to enjoy clean air and water, unencumbered by the toxic hazards that government permitting had allowed to fester in their neighborhoods. The disparity between these two battles with City Hall spoke volumes about the environmental challenges facing Phoenix, and almost every other city divided by race and class. Hydrologists talk about water “flow” in the West, but very few of the rivers flow naturally anymore, and many, like the mighty Colorado itself, rarely reach their destinations. Except for spasmodic floods, the Salt River has not really flowed through the Phoenix Basin since the early twentieth century, and it exists today primarily as an orderly system of canals. In its natural heyday, it was a wildly erratic river, and so its flood plain was several miles broad. Today’s riverbed is a vast moonscape of sand and cobbles, though it is far from deserted. Cheap land and laissez-faire regulation have drawn in the region’s worst polluters over the years. For decades, it was used as a dumping ground for all manner of waste, some of it exported from neighboring states, like California, with more oversight over disposal of hazardous materials than Arizona. From a commercial standpoint, the riverbed was the mother of all brownfield sites, zealously eyed by developers hoping to cut a deal with government agencies with fast-track access to federal cleanup funds. Dreams of converting the urban portions of the Salt River into a waterside attraction dated back to the 1960s when ASU design students conceived a restoration project under the alluring name of Rio Salado.