The “World” concept helps us think about shared identity and behaviors, but we also want to explore diversity and variability within the Hohokam Ballcourt World. Part of Archaeology Southwest’s new research on social identity (how people saw themselves and expressed that relative to others) across the Gila River watershed focuses on the Hohokam Ballcourt World. Aspects such as chronology and settlement patterns are well established, allowing researchers to delve into large anthropological issues at a regional scale. Thanks in large part to over 50 years’ worth of legally mandated projects, an enormous amount of archaeological fieldwork has been conducted within the Hohokam Ballcourt World. What new research is underway in the Hohokam Ballcourt World? Instead, archaeologists found smoothed or plastered surfaces (or both) and “centerline markers” similar to those seen in Mesoamerican ballcourts, which had been documented in 16th-century Spanish accounts. When excavated, though, they showed no evidence of water-deposited sediments-no fine layers of silts and clays that would have settled to the bottom of standing water. How do we know these structures were ballcourts?Įarly archaeologists believed that these structures were reservoirs. For example, people used the court at Wupatki from around A.D. Ballcourts in the Flagstaff area were made and used much later than those in the southern Southwest. 750 and, with a few exceptions, were not used past A.D. When did the Hohokam Ballcourt World flourish?īallcourts began to appear in the Hohokam World around A.D. Most of the roughly 250 known ballcourts are found in the major population areas of the time-along the lower Salt and middle Gila Rivers (today, metropolitan Phoenix) and along the Santa Cruz River (metropolitan Tucson). The easternmost courts are found in the Safford area, and the westernmost courts are along the lower Gila River, west of Gila Bend. The northernmost courts, which are probably some of the latest, are located near Flagstaff, Arizona, whereas the southernmost Hohokam-style ballcourt site is in northern Mexico along the Santa Cruz River, which eventually flows north through the Tucson Basin. Where is the Hohokam Ball court World?Īt its peak, the Hohokam Ballcourt World covered over 58,000 square kilometers (more than 22,000 square miles).
This provided opportunities for visiting and for exchanging commodities in the form of raw materials and finished goods.
People watching or participating in the ballgame probably came together from several different villages. These sizeable basin-shaped structures with earthen embankments were built at most of the large villages throughout the region. One of the most recognizable attributes of Hohokam culture is a form of public architecture that we call ballcourts. The term “ world” is an appropriate alternative to these labels, signifying multicultural participation in a common religion, ideology, or cosmology during periods of greatest inclusivity, such as the Hohokam Ballcourt World. These regional patterns probably encompassed multiple cultural, ethnic, and linguistic groups. The largest identifiable archaeological culture patterns have been variously called culture areas, regional systems, or archaeological horizons.
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