The Organization of Middle Sedentary Period Hohokam Ceramic Production in the Gila River Valley, Arizona

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Sunday Eiselt and Dr. Andrew Darling will undertake a three year study of Hohokam ceramic production along the middle Gila River Valley just south of metropolitan Phoenix in central Arizona. Hundreds of years before the establishment of this city Native Americans had already mastered the art of water management, irrigating the desert with thousands of miles of hand-dug canals. These inhabitants are known by archaeologists as the Hohokam and their descendants are the O'odham (Pima) who occupy the region today. The Hohokam regional system reached its apogee during the middle Sedentary Period from A.D. 1000-1070 when it spanned some 80,000 sq. km of the Sonoran Desert. Pottery specialists along the middle Gila River supplied this large system with thousands of vessels in return for agricultural products from surrounding groups. Such large-scale craft production is typically associated with complex societies, with guilds and mass production techniques. Yet, the Hohokam were relatively egalitarian, with neither cities, nor an extensive division of labor, nor marked social stratification. How, then, in the absence of more complex social systems, was production among the Sedentary Period Hohokam organized to create greater economies of scale? The goal of the current study is to test two competing hypotheses related to this question. The first proposes that multiple communities acted independently to produce ceramics. More communities were brought into the system, but pottery manufacture was dispersed among multiple villages that traded their products directly to outside consumers. The second proposes that ceramic manufacturing was highly concentrated in one or a few villages that were supplied with raw materials by other villages. Both hypotheses may account for high levels of ceramic yield, but the latter implies a greater level of inter-village coordination to create greater economies of scale at the expense of emerging settlement hierarchies. The competing hypotheses will be tested through geochemical and petrographic examination of raw materials and ceramic artifacts in order to determine how the Hohokam achieved such great economic and production success. The intellectual merit of this research rests on the opportunity to explore the relationships of craft production and economic intensification in middle range societies like the Hohokam. The study will provide critical information on whether enhanced production efficiency precedes (rather than follows from) more complex political developments. Work will take place on the Gila River Indian Community Reservation under the oversight of their Cultural Resource Management Program. Collaboration between the Gila River Indian Community and Southern Methodist University broadens the participation of underrepresented groups in archaeology while enhancing the infrastructure for research and education.