Overview
The term Hohokam, borrowed from the Akimel O'odham, is used to define an archaeological culture that existed from the beginning of the current era to about the middle of the 15th century AD. As an abstract construct, this culture was centered on the middle Gila River and lower Salt River drainages, in what is known as the Phoenix basin. This is referred to as the Hohokam Core Area, as opposed to the Hohokam Peripheries; or adjacent regions into which the Hohokam Culture extended. Collectively, the Core and Peripheries formed what is referred to as the hoekam regional system, which occupied the northern or Upper Sonoran Desert in what is now Arizona. Within a larger context, the Hohokam Culture area inhabited a central position between the Patayan Culture, situated along the Lower Colorado River and in southern California; the Trincheras Culture of Sonora, Mexico; the Mogollon Culture located in eastern Arizona, southwest New Mexico, and northwest Chihuahua, Mexico; as well as the Anasazi Culture in northern Arizona, northern New Mexico, southwest Colorado, and southern Utah.
The Hohokam seem to have constructed an assortment of simple canals combined with weirs in their various agricultural pursuits. Between the 7th and 14th centuries, they also built and maintained extensive irrigation networks along the lower Salt and middle Gila rivers that rivaled the complexity of those used in the ancient Near East, Egypt, and China. These were constructed using relatively simple excavation tools, without the benefit of advanced engineering technologies. Over 70 years of archaeological research has revealed that the Hohokam cultivated varieties of cotton, tobacco, maize, beans and squash, as well as harvested a vast assortment of wild plants. Late in the Hohokam Chronological Sequence, they also used extensive dry-farming systems, primarily to grow agave for food and fiber. Their reliance on agricultural strategies based on canal irrigation, vital in their less than hospitable desert environment and arid climate, provided the basis for the aggregation of rural populations into stable urban centers.
Overall, Hohokam villages and smaller settlements can be classified within the rancheria-tradition; these typically found near water and arable land, and identified by clusters of residential areas composed of discrete groups of habitation and utility structures combined with extramural use areas. Many features of early Hohokam domestic architecture, such as large square or rectangular pithouses, seem to have been transplanted relatively intact from early Formative Period examples first developed in the Tucson basin. But, by the 7th century AD, a distinct Hohokam architectural tradition emerged. Throughout the Hohokam Chronological Sequence, individual residential structures were normally excavated approximately 40 cm (16 in) below ground level, with plastered or compacted floors that covered between 12 and 35 m2, and featured a circular, bowl-shaped, clay-lined hearth situated near the wall-entry.
Hohokam burial practices varied over time. Initially, the primary method employed was flexed inhumation, similar to the tradition used by the southern Mogollon Culture, located immediately to the east. In the late Formative and Preclassic periods, the Hohokam cremated their dead, again strikingly similar to the traditions documented among the historic Patayan Culture situated to the west along the Lower Colorado River. Although the particulars of the practice changed somewhat, the Hohokam cremation tradition remained dominant until around AD 1300. At this time extended inhumation, similar to that used by the Salado tradition to the north and northeast, was quickly adopted. Also of interest, many of the details of the late Hohokam burial patterns were very similar to the tradition practiced by the historic Tohono and Akimel O'odham.{{full}
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