Harold S. Gladwin - The Snaketown Excavations

The Snaketown Excavations

Arguably Gladwin’s most famous excavations took place outside Phoenix at a place called Snaketown, which delved into the Hohokam culture. After having a chance meeting with the descendants of this culture in 1927, Gladwin wanted to find the roots of these people that the Pima referred to as Hohokam, or “those who had gone.” Finding that these people had left little behind in terms of their modes of travel and pathways, Gladwin found difficulty in locating clues to their culture while he was in the Gila Basin. After visiting numerous prehistoric sites (in his own words, thousands of sites), Gladwin and his colleagues decided upon Snaketown as their focal point for excavations into this culture. The team decided that this site would be the most rewarding, for it had been relatively untouched by others, especially looters. The excavation began in 1934, and the first results were published four years later. In the first publication, Gladwin and his team took a special interest in the various types of pottery, figurines, stone tools, and shells, and the reference to each time period that they could identify. This site remained a focus for Gladwin for years to come, and he reevaluated his results and republished his works on this site many times in order to better comprehend and better inform the archaeological community of its importance. Taking into account the rapid increase of information about Southwestern cultures, and the increase in accuracy of dating methods, Gladwin admitted that he and his team originally had made some judgments and suppositions that did not fit into the current criteria, that he was, eleven years later, now dealing with. This publication exemplifies Gladwin’s commitment to the field of archaeology, for in his publications he typically admitted where he had gone wrong, and where he needed to keep an open mind in his work. It was through his constant revisions and republications that Gladwin was able to help decipher the lost culture of the Hohokam.