Hohokam

A prehistoric tradition of southern Arizona which began as a sedentary farming culture around 300 BC and existed until 1400/1450 AD. It was a cultural unit within the Cochise subculture and it had large villages, canal irrigation, and pottery-making. The finest craft products were shell jewelry and objects of carved stone. Diagnostic traits include small villages of shallow, oblong pit-houses with no formalized community plan, cremation of the dead, plain grey or brown paddle and anvil smoothed pottery (or sometimes painted red on buff). The tradition is divided into: Pioneer (150-550 AD), Colonial (550-900 AD), Sedentary (900-1100 AD), Classic (1100-1450 AD), and Post-Classic (1450-1700 AD). Between 550-1200 AD, renewed Mexican contacts brought foreign elements to the Hohokam: courts for the ball-game, platform mounds, new types of maize, slab metates, mosaic mirrors, exotic symbolism from Mexican religion, and the use of copper bells. From about 1100, certain groups began to construct pueblos under Anasazi influence. After 1400/1450, the Hohokam territory along the Gila and Salt Rivers seems to have been partially abandoned. Their cultural heirs are the Pima and Papago Indians. Snaketown is an important Hohokam site.

An early group of settled agriculturalists in North America. Their core area was in the drainage basin of the Salt and Gila Rivers in the southern Arizona desert. Traditionally 300 bc marks the earliest Hohokam manifestation, though their origin (and their disappearance) is still unclear. A major debate continues among scholars as to whether or not the Hohokam represent an immigrant Mexican group. Diagnostic traits include small villages of shallow, oblong pithouses with no formalized community plan, cremation of the dead, plain grey or brown paddle and anvil smoothed pottery (or sometimes painted red on buff). Where the environment allowed, canal irrigation was practised on a grand scale. The major chronological periods are Pioneer (300 bc-ad 550), Colonial (550-900), Sedentary (900-1100) and Classic (1100-1450). Hohokam dates were originally derived from material found in association with more chronologically sound Anasazi material, but excavations at Snaketown have largely confirmed this dating scheme. A strong Mesoamerican influence is evident throughout Hohokam history but particularly between 500 and 1200. New types of maize, slab metates, platform mounds, ball courts, as well as copper bells, mosaic minors and other luxury goods all make their appearance. From 1200 on the introduction of new traits (e.g. Pueblo building) suggests an influx of new peoples, probably the Anasazi. After 1450 distinctive Hohokam traits have all but disappeared, and continue only as an admixture to other cultural groups. It is possible that the present-day Pima and Papago tribes are Hohokam descendants, but clear continuity has not yet been established. Hokule’a. A replica of an ancient Polynesian canoe, which was sailed from Maui (in the Hawaiian Islands) to Tahiti by traditional Polynesian methods of navigation in a 35-day voyage in 1976. The canoe was 18 metres long, double-hulled and carried 15 men and a cargo of traditional plant foods and livestock. The success of the voyage has thrown important light on ancient Polynesian voyaging and navigation.