HOHOKAM CULTURE

culture of a group of North American Indians who lived between perhaps 300 BC and AD 1400 in the semiarid region of what is now central and southern Arizona, largely along the Gila and Salt rivers. The culture is customarily divided into four developmental periods: Pioneer, from perhaps 300 BC to AD 500; Colonial, 500900; Sedentary, 9001100; and Classic, 11001400. During the Pioneer period the Hohokam lived in villages composed of widely scattered, individually built structures of wood, brush, and clay, each built over a shallow pit. They depended on the cultivation of corn (maize), supplemented by the gathering of wild beans and fruits and some hunting. Although floodwater irrigation may have been practiced, it was during this period that the first irrigation canal was builta three-mile-long channel in the Gila River Valley that directed river water to the fields. The Hohokam's development of complex canal networks in the millennium to come was unsurpassed in pre-Columbian North America; this agricultural engineering was one of their greatest achievements. During this early period they also developed several varieties of pottery. They seem also to have had elaborate epic poems. Hohokam culture expanded during the next period, the Colonial, to influence all of what is now the southern half of Arizona. Villages of pit houses, little changed from before, continued as the norm, but ball courts, similar to those of the Maya, were introduced. Cotton was added to corn as a major crop, and irrigation canals proliferated; by AD 700 canals had become narrower and deeper to cut down water loss through ground absorption and evaporation. Pottery was improved and styles were borrowed from neighbouring peoples. The area of occupation contracted somewhat during the Sedentary period, but villages still consisted of unplanned collections of pit houses, only slightly better reinforced; occasionally villages were walled. Corn and cotton were cultivated with ever more extensive irrigation systems. A major achievement was the casting of copper bells in wax molds. The Classic period of Hohokam culture is notable for the peaceful intrusion of the Salado Indians, a branch of the Anasazi culture (q.v.). They came from the upper reaches of the Salt River, lived in Hohokam territory for several decades, then withdrew and disappeared. The principal effect of the presence of this Pueblo people is revealed in architecture. Great multiple-storied community houses with massive walls of adobe began to be built, along with the older, flimsier pit houses. Beans and squash were added to the staple of corn, supplemented by game and wild seeds and roots. Irrigation canal networks reached their greatest extent and complexity in the 14th century; in the Salt River Valley there were more than 150 miles of canals. (Some renovated canals were put back into use in the 20th century.) The art of basketry was added to pottery. For unknown reasons the Hohokam culture disintegrated during the early 15th century. (The term Hohokam is said to be Pima for Those Who Have Vanished.) The later known occupants of the area, the Pima and Papago, are probably direct descendants of the Hohokam Indians.