Hohokam civilization5/30/2023 Children carry water, their bare feet padding along hard-packed ground. Cars and pedestrians become farmers tending corn rows with long wooden tools and old men sitting in the shade. Now, as I pedal through the shimmering heat of the city, on-ramps and air-conditioned high rises gradually blur into Hohokam dwellings. Skulls and bones and the blueprints of villages float below. I imagine the asphalt like a glass-bottomed boat. After hearing about that, I look at parking lots differently. Ceramic jars and finely crafted offerings were tucked among the dead, who rested beneath parked cars for decades. Once workers tore up a Phoenix parking lot and found nearly two hundred ancient human burial sites under it. Sometimes these shards of pre-Columbian jars or bowls are painted with fragments of red birds and spirals, dating back to the other side of history. Boulders scribbled with rock art - circles, lizards and human figures looking out over crowded subdivisions. An entire history began and ended in this place centuries before modern Phoenix existed.Īs I bike around the city today, I find reminders of the Hohokam above ground, too. They played ritualized games in ball courts throughout the city. They criss-crossed this desert valley with hundreds of miles of irrigation canals. But before that, they flourished for centuries. The Hohokam were likely victims of overpopulation, disease, and drought followed by floods. It means "All Used Up." It's an apt description of a Southwest nucleus that all but disappeared in the fifteenth century. This fallen civilization is called Hohokam by its descendants, the Tohono O'odham people. I hear of other sites from archaeologists or utility workers digging tunnels and trenches. Back then, ruins were still standing across the valley. I pinpoint some sites from maps made in the 1800’s. I search cul-de-sacs and strip malls for indications of old ceremonial mounds and adobe towers. I ride across Phoenix on a bicycle looking for subtle rises and dips in the ground. I'm making a map of this buried city, matching it to grids of modern streets. Peel back just the top couple of feet there, and you'll find the remnants of a sprawling society of farmers who lived in adobe villages a thousand years ago. An 1846 photo of a Hohokam ruin in what is now Phoenix.Ĭourtesy of Casa Grande National MonumentĬraig Childs is author of the book Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession.
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