HOHOKAM POTTERY DESIGNS HOW TO

While some in the communities had medical knowledge and offered traditional cures, treatments were not available for many maladies. Planting and harvest times would require the efforts of the entire community.Дisease was a significant problem for pre-industrial people.

They had to protect crops from rabbits, birds and other marauders. Farmers had to maintain the fields and open and close the irrigation gates at the proper time. The canals required the organization and labor of thousands of people to build, maintain and operate. Life for the Hohokam focused, in large extent, on agriculture and growing crops. Mural in the Arizona Museum of Natural History of the Rowley Site, near Park of the Canals in Mesa, c. Irrigating up to 110,000 acres by AD 1300, the Hohokam irrigation systems supported the largest population in the prehistoric Southwest. The Arizona Museum of Natural History discovered a prehistoric canal at the north end of Dobson Road that measured 15 feet deep and 45 feet wide. The canals were perfectly laid out on the landscape to achieve a downhill drop (or gradient) of 1 to 2 feet per mile. To meet their needs, the Hohokam engineered the largest and most sophisticated irrigation system in the Americas. In the arid desert environment of the Salt and Gila River Valleys, the homeland of the Hohokam, there was not enough rainfall to grow crops. The Hohokam were the only culture in North America to rely on irrigation canals to supply water to their crops.

O'odham water control gate in historic period irrigation canal. Omar Turney map of 1929 showing prehistoric irrigation canals north and south of the Salt River in the Phoenix area.Д¬arla Booker and Alexandra Howard recording a prehistoric canal exposed in a trench at the Riverview development in Mesa. This group might have occupied southern Arizona as early as 2000 BC! Originating as archaic hunters and gatherers who lived on wild plants and animals, these peoples settled in permanent communities and produced their own food instead of living a more mobile life and gathering what nature provided. Called the Early Agricultural Period, this early group grew corn, lived in sedentary villages all year round and developed sophisticated irrigation canals. Archaeologists identified a culture and people that were ancestors of the Hohokam. In the 1990s, a major archaeological dig along the Santa Cruz River in Tucson resulted in a startling discovery.

Early archaeologists proposed that Hohokam culture developed in Mexico and moved into what is now Arizona. The round-bodied little people seem more common in the Santa Cruz phase.Where did Hohokam culture come from? To the first scientists who asked this question, the Hohokam seemed to appear in Arizona quite suddenly with the ability to build sophisticated irrigation system to water their crops. These centuries are divided into three pottery phases, Gila Butte, Santa Cruz, and Sacaton. The figures appear in the middle, around 600 to 1100 A.D. When did the human figures appear on pottery? Technology of pottery making and popular designs changed over the centuries, allowing archaeologists to divide pottery into phases in an approximate chronology. People were living and growing corn in Arizona long before that, but in this era pottery became one of the marks of the culture. ItвЂ™s difficult to assign dates, but many archaeologists say the recognizable culture appeared about 450 A.D. They developed a complex society based on irrigation agriculture.

The longevity of their culture and their accomplishments were amazing. The Hohokam lived in the Salt River and Gila River basins in central Arizona for more than a thousand years. And others, though unfortunately not in our examples, are playing flutes. Some are holding long staffs, some have feathers on their heads. Some had burden baskets secured by tumplines over their foreheads. What was this little figure doing when it had its head and all its arms and legs? Many pots and fragments recovered from archaeological sites show the little people holding hands in line like dancers.

HOHOKAM POTTERY DESIGNS HOW TO

He taught many people how to collect natural clay and make pots in open fires the ancient way. Some of CharlieвЂ™s reproductions are shown with this sherd, and others are on display in the Archaeology Wing. The Cave Creek Museum has some modern reproduction pots showing how these figures would look when complete. It was made by the people we call Hohokam. AВ small sherd, a broken piece of pottery about the size of a quarter that has part of a human figure painted on it.

Hohokam pottery designs