History

The Hohokam culture emerged in the Sonoran Desert of present-day Arizona from a regional archaeological tradition that extends back to at least 300 BC. The name “Hohokam” comes from the O’odham language and is generally translated as “those who have vanished” or “all used up” — a name applied by the Akimel O’odham people, who consider themselves the Hohokam’s descendants, to their ancestors. Snaketown, from the O’odham Skoaquik (“place of snakes”), was occupied continuously from the Pioneer period (c. 300 BC-500 AD) through the Colonial, Sedentary, and Classic periods to the general abandonment of the Hohokam heartland around 1450 AD — a span of approximately 1,700 years that makes it one of the longest continuously occupied prehistoric settlements in North America. Excavations by Emil Haury of the University of Arizona in 1934-35 and 1964-65 revealed a stratigraphic sequence of 12 occupation phases, each documented by distinctive ceramic styles, architectural patterns, and material culture.

The Hohokam achievement that sets them apart in the pre-Columbian Americas was hydraulic: beginning in the Colonial period (c. 500-900 AD) and expanding massively in the Sedentary and Classic periods, the Hohokam constructed an irrigation canal network of approximately 800 km of primary canals in the Salt and Gila River valleys, distributing water from the rivers across approximately 40,000 hectares of desert to support intensive agriculture of maize, beans, squash, cotton, and agave. The scale of this infrastructure — which supported an estimated 30,000-100,000 people in the Phoenix Basin during the Classic period — was unmatched anywhere in the pre-Columbian Americas north of Mesoamerica. The canals were dug with stone and wood tools by hand, without draft animals or wheeled vehicles, and required continuous communal maintenance to prevent silting and diversion failure.

The Hohokam also developed a distinctive artistic tradition — red-on-buff pottery, carved stone palettes, copper bells traded from western Mexico, shell jewellery, and the only known pre-Columbian ball courts north of Mexico (over 200 identified). The culture’s abrupt collapse and abandonment around 1450 AD — following probable prolonged drought, catastrophic flooding events, soil salinisation from excessive irrigation, and social disruption — remains one of the most intensively studied questions in American archaeology. The Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Tohono O’odham peoples of Arizona maintain a living connection to the Hohokam world.