This accessible addition to Hohokam literature explores the development and evolution of their ancient iconography across various media and through time, connecting it to their daily lives, belief systems, and cultural influences. Seen in their painted pottery, shell ornaments, carved stone figurines, petroglyphs, architectural features, and highly valued trade goods, this imagery provides fascinating insight into Hohokam ideas about water, weather, desert plants and animals, agriculture, travel, trade, and cosmology.
Drawing on archaeological literature, ethnographies, oral histories, stories of descendant O’odham peoples, museum collections, and petroglyph sites, Gregonis and Evans examine Hohokam lifeways and belief systems through their symbolic expressions and the contexts in which they are found. Changes in artistic styles and iconography reflected changes in society and ideology and conveyed messages to the broader community and to other groups.
Most Hohokam objects and symbols covered in the text were created between A.D. 500 and 1200 during the Pre-Classic period, a time when Hohokam material culture became distinct and was influenced by the cultures of west Mexico, hunter-gatherer groups of the western desert, the Mogollon, and ancestral Puebloan cultures. The authors discuss styles and materials, including clay, stone, shell, bone, and the use of shiny rocks and minerals such as hematite, pyrite, and schist in pendants, mosaics, and ceramic vessels to represent water and rain. Using the anthropological concepts of design, symbology, oral history, cosmology, and personhood (how an object or symbol came to be and what cultural role it played), the authors consider possible meanings of the ancient imagery. This insightful book, with its excellent summary of Hohokam cultural developments as seen through the lens of symbolism, is highly informative and includes a useful glossary of terms and extensive references, as well as beautiful illustrations and color images of artifacts, architectural features, and landscapes.
