For a thousand years they flourished in the arid lands now part of Arizona. They built extensive waterworks, ballcourts, and platform mounds, made beautiful pottery and jewelry, and engaged in wide-ranging trade networks. Then, slowly, their civilization faded and transmuted into something no longer Hohokam. Are today's Tohono O'odham their heirs or their conquerors? The mystery and the beauty of Hohokam civilization are the subjects of the essays in this volume. Written by archaeologists who have led the effort to excavate, record, and preserve the remnants of this ancient culture, the chapters illuminate the way the Hohokam organized their households and their communities, their sophisticated pottery and textiles, their irrigation system, the huge ballcourts and platform mounds they built, and much more.
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today “A feat of both scholarship and storytelling.”—Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed. A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch—and influenced global markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory. In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.
This volume takes stock of the empirical evidence, theoretical orientations, and historical reconstructions of archaeology of the American Southwest. Themed chapters on method and theory are accompanied by comprehensive overviews of all major cultural traditions in the region, from the Paleoindians, to Chaco Canyon, to the onset of Euro-American imperialism.
This unique guide for literate travelers in the American Southwest tells the story of fifteen iconic sites across Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, and southern Colorado through the eyes of the explorers, missionaries, and travelers who were the first non-natives to describe them. Noted borderlands historians David J. Weber and William deBuys lead readers through centuries of political, cultural, and ecological change. The sites visited in this volume range from popular destinations within the National Park System—including Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, and Mesa Verde—to the Spanish colonial towns of Santa Fe and Taos and the living Indian communities of Acoma, Zuni, and Taos. Lovers of the Southwest, residents and visitors alike, will delight in the authors’ skillful evocation of the region’s sweeping landscapes, its rich Hispanic and Indian heritage, and the sense of discovery that so enchanted its early explorers.
"A graphic, lucid account of the Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon highlights how these ancient cultures evolved so successfully in response to their changing habitat."—Science News Most people are familiar with the famous pre-Columbian civilizations of the Aztecs and Maya of Mexico, but few realize just how advanced were contemporary cultures in the American Southwest. Here lie some of the most remarkable monuments of America's prehistoric past, such as Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. Ten thousand years ago, humans first colonized this seemingly inhospitable landscape with its scorching hot deserts and upland areas that drop below freezing even during the early summer months. The initial hunter-gatherer bands gradually adapted to become sedentary village groups. The high point of Southwestern civilization was reached with the emergence of cultures known as Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon in the first millennium AD. Interweaving the latest archaeological evidence with early first-person accounts, Stephen Plog explains the rise and mysterious fall of Southwestern cultures. For this revised edition, he discusses new research and its implications for our understanding of the prehistoric Southwest. As he concludes, the Southwest is still home to vibrant Native American communities who carry on many of the old traditions.
In From Huhugam to Hohokam: Heritage and Archaeology in the American Southwest, J. Brett Hill examines the history of O’odham heritage as it was recorded at the beginning of European conquest. A parallel history of scientific exploration is then traced forward to produce intricate models of the coming and going of ancient peoples. Throughout this history, Native accounts were routinely dismissed as an inferior kind of knowledge. More recently, though, a revolutionary change has taken hold in archaeology as Native insights and premises are integrated into scientific thought. Integration was once suspected of undermining basic principles of knowledge, but J. Brett Hill contends that it provides a deeper and more accurate sense of the connection between living and ancient people. Hill combines three decades of experience in archaeology with a liberal arts perspective to produce something for readers at all levels in the fields of anthropology, Native American studies, history, museum studies, and other heritage disciplines
Over a period of centuries the Ancient Ones of the American Southwest constructed a pattern of sandstone villages that precisely matches key constellations in the sky. This book plunges you into the mysteries of these unified star correlations. Other fascinating topics include: Orion’s global stargate shrines, Arizona earth chakras, crypto-creatures and star ancestors; the lost empire of Aztlán; evidence of transoceanic migrations to the Southwest in early epochs; the purpose of massive pyramids and canals made by those who once lived on the site of modern-day Phoenix; the subterranean origin of the Anasazi; the cave conundrum of Grand Canyon; the Hopi Mystery Egg; and prophecies of the Fifth World. Chapters include: Stellar Arizona; OZ (Orion Zone) Rising; Arizona Earth Chakras; Grand Canyon Cave Enigma and the Hopi Underworld; Pyramids and Canals of the Phoenix Basin Hohokam; The Hopi Mystery Egg and Prophecies of the Fifth World; All Roads Lead to... Chaco; Pole Star to the Underworld-Anasazi Ruins of Northwestern New Mexico; Mimbres-A Pre-Columbian Counter Culture In Southwestern New Mexico; Mummies, a Meteorite, and the Macaw Constellation-Casas Grandes, Mexico; The Lost Empire of Aztlán; The ABC of Orion: Ants, Bulls, and Copper; Crab Nebula Notes-Shifting To the Age of Taurus, 4,000 BC; Epic Seas Voyages of the Desert People; Genetic Evidence For Pre-Columbian Travel To the American Southwest; Global Orion Shrines-A Celestial Plan; more.
The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology reviews the continent's first and last foragers, farmers, and great pre-Columbian civic and ceremonial centers, from Chaco Canyon to Moundville and beyond.
