Hohokam pottery
The end of the period began as the effects of the coming Great Drought began to be felt around 1350. The Classic Period saw larger and larger building and irrigation systems built in the Gila-Salt River Basin, in the Tucson Basin and in the area around Grewe-Casa Grande. The largest settlement of the time, Snaketown, was partially burned and suddenly abandoned in 1050. Common courtyards and common-use ovens developed. Influences from Mexico increased and ball courts were built in many areas.
The culture grew more prosperous as attested by the evolution of pottery with a red slip over a buff paste. Social stratification began and burial ceremonies grew more complex. Throughout the period villages grew larger and irrigation systems expanded and grew more complex. Colonial/Pre-Classic Period : 750-1050 CE.Population growth was limited only by the ability of their systems to feed their people. Cultivating these crops brought about the development of irrigation systems and once there was that kind of investment in a physical plant, the people became quite sedentary. It was around 300 CE when new squash, beans, cotton and other seeds began to appear, probably brought north through trade with central Mexico. Their culture was successful enough that they grew to develop trade routes with northern Mexico. The early Hohokam have been traced to a group of small villages in the middle Gila River basin. The Pioneer Formative Period : 1-750 CE.Some sections of those systems have been dug out and are still in use in local irrigation systems.Īround 1350 CE The Hohokam Chronological Sequence Some irrigation systems built by the Hohokam are still visible from space. When the Apache first came into the area around 1500 CE, there was virtually no one to oppose them until the Spanish came along in the 1530's. Some went northeast into the Salado area and merged with those people. By 1450, the Great Drought had been on for 100 years and everything was abandoned.Īrchaeologists think that most of the people migrated to cooler, wetter areas in the surrounding mountains and are the ancestors of todays Tohono O'odham and Pima peoples. With influences from their trading partners showing everywhere, it is thought there was a lot of immigration and trade to and through the Hohokam centers.īy 1300, Pueblo Grande was probably the most populous city in the Southwest. Their pueblos were located at the crossroads of major trade routes connecting the Mogollon to the east with the Pitayan and the Pacific coast to the west, the Trincheras in Mexico to the south with the Ancestral Puebloans to the north and east. That evidence indicates a culture that began more than 3,000 years ago but most archaeologists are agreed that the major defining facets of Hohokam culture emerged around 300 CE. Pueblo Grande was built around the confluence of the Gila and Snake Rivers in what is now the Phoenix basin.Įvidence of a culture from which the Hohokam may have evolved has been found in the Tucson basin. Snaketown was abandoned around 1050 CE and most of those people moved to the area of Pueblo Grande. Major Hohokam centers that have been identified are Snaketown, Casa Grande and Pueblo Grande.
However, around 1350 CE a great drought set in all across the southwest and the centers of Hohokam culture disappeared as the people migrated to areas with more water and less heat. But like the Ancestral Puebloans to their north, Hohokam culture went through several phases over the years, beginning with nomadic hunter-gatherers and proceeding through the development of pithouses, above-ground dwellings and finally multi-story pueblos. They have been primarily noted for their development of irrigation and their construction of elaborate water control and distribution systems. The Hohokam were a people who occupied the greater part of central and southern Arizona for more than a thousand years.