According to Gregory Schaaf, the director of the Center for Indigenous Arts and Culture, in his book Ancient Ancestors of the Southwest: “Pima oral history tradition describes how elite Hohokam leaders became oppressive and locals drove them back to the south, as part of a liberation movement. This may be due to a combination of environmental factors (including the build-up of salt in the soil from irrigation) and civil warfare. ![]() ![]() Now, perhaps, the close spiritual relationships were between a few individuals with unusual powers and the water deities of the supernatural realm.”Īfter 1400, many of the Hohokam towns were abandoned. Brian Fagan writes: “It was as if a few members of society elevated themselves in both material and spiritual terms above everyone else, whereas in earlier times the relationship between the living and the ancestors, with the underworld where humans originated, had been more important. While the ball courts were built into the ground, the platform mounds seem to reach for the sky. The shift from ball courts to platform mounds suggests that there was a change in religion, in the nature of the Hohokam’s relationships with the supernatural. The platform mounds seem to be associated with elite activities. The construction of the platform mounds seems to suggest a change from a relatively egalitarian society to a more stratified society, a society in which an elite group was setting itself apart from other people. Archaeologist Brian Fagan, in his book Elixer: A History of Water and Humankind, writes: “It is as if Hohokam society became more hierarchical, with only a few individuals having access to the precincts within the enclosures.” The morphology of platform mounds and the structure of Classic Period Hohokam sites. This seems to suggest a major change in Hohokam social organization. The Hohokam of southern Arizona are noted for greater duration of. that the Pueblo Grande platform mound was in dire need of preservation. While the ball courts of the early period were open and seemed to encourage spectators, the platform mounds have limited access. Pueblo Grande is a prehistoric Hohokam village preserved by the City of Phoenix. On top of the mounds there were as many as 30 rooms. The Hohokam platform mounds typically three- to 10-foot high rectangular earthen structures with plastered flat tops and sloping sides, measuring several hundred to several thousand square feet in area had ancient roots, although the purposes of these massive structures have never been fully understood. The mounds were often built within an adobe compound and some of them are over 3.5 meters (12 feet) high. ![]() Most of the platform mounds-more than 120 have been identified-were constructed in the Phoenix Basin. Some archaeologists have calculated that construction of the larger mounds may have required 50,000 person-hours. The construction of these mounds required community labor on a massive scale. During this time, the platform mounds would be composed of thousands of cubic feet of fill. These platform mounds took on greater importance and between 12 they grew dramatically in size. Sometime after 1100 CE, the Hohokam ball courts seemed to be less important and the people began constructing platform mounds. This partial excavated and restored Hohokam site gives you an excellent feel for the extent and complexity of the Classic.
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