The Hohokam Millennium

by Suzanne K. Fish (Editor), Paul R. Fish (Editor)

For a thousand years they flourished in the arid lands now part of Arizona. They built extensive waterworks, ballcourts, and platform mounds, made beautiful pottery and jewelry, and engaged in wide-ranging trade networks. Then, slowly, their civilization faded and transmuted into something no longer Hohokam. Are today's Tohono O'odham their heirs or their conquerors? The mystery and the beauty of Hohokam civilization are the subjects of the essays in this volume. Written by archaeologists who have led the effort to excavate, record, and preserve the remnants of this ancient culture, the chapters illuminate the way the Hohokam organized their households and their communities, their sophisticated pottery and textiles, their irrigation system, the huge ballcourts and platform mounds they built, and much more.

Genres: Archaeology

168 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2007

About the author

Suzanne K. Fish is a Research Archaeologist at the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona. She has specialized in Hohokam archaeology for more than ten years; other areas of professional emphasis include ethnobotany, settlement patterns, and Mesoamerican prehistory. Recent publications include articles and books on the advantages of full-coverage archaeological survey, subsistence issues, demography, and Hohokam cultural ecology and social organization.

Reviews

[Jim Collett · Rating 5 out of 5]

The books in the School for Advanced Research are always good reads. A collection of informative but readable articles on a particular topic, they inform the general reader without overpowering with too much technical detail. For those wanting more, there is a nice bibliography at the back. This particular book focuses on one of the lesser known Southwestern cultures, the Hohokam of southern Arizona and northern Mexico. The physical remains of these people are fewer and largely obliterated by the Phoenix development. Yet, they created a remarkable culture of canals in this harsh arid climate. The articles provide views into the structure of this society, their lifeways, unique cultural traits such as ballcourts, and even what may account for their demise.