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Hohokam

The master canal-builders of the Sonoran Desert, who engineered hundreds of miles of irrigation along the Salt and Gila rivers, played ball on Mesoamerican-style courts and raised earthen platform mounds at Snaketown, Pueblo Grande and Casa Grande.

Catastrophic floods, canal failure and social upheaval shattered the system after ~1400; the great towns emptied, and the surviving people became the O'odham (Pima and Tohono O'odham) of the same desert.

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Borders over time

The atlas holds 3 border frames for Hohokam — the shape you scrub through changes in 300 · 776 · 1151.

Moments from the Chronicle

• 450 First Hohokam canals on the Salt and Gila Sonoran Desert villages around Snaketown begin digging gravity-fed irrigation canals, founding one of North America's most sophisticated water-engineering traditions.
• 1450 Paquimé burned; Hohokam canals collapse Casas Grandes is sacked and abandoned and the Hohokam canal towns of the Phoenix basin empty, ending the great Classic-period centers of the Southwest a generation before European contact.

Further reading

• The Hohokam Millennium Suzanne K. Fish and Paul R. Fish · 2007

  An authoritative overview of the canal-building Hohokam of the Sonoran Desert.

• A History of the Ancient Southwest Stephen H. Lekson · 2009

  Sets the Hohokam alongside the other ancient Southwestern traditions (broad context).

Sources

• Hohokam — Wikipedia