Hohokam Archaeoastronomy

Abstract

The Hohokam culture, one of the major pre-Columbian cultural groups in the American Southwest, is well known for their extensive irrigation systems, the largest in the New World. Choreographing the movement of people and scheduling the cleaning and repair of their canals during low water periods, as well as harvesting their bountiful crops during two growing seasons, would have required a calendar system that reflected the natural cycles of the Sonoran Desert. In addition, orienting their ritual architecture and public spaces such as ball courts, platform mounds, and plazas according to the cardinal directions would have required knowledge of the sun’s daily and annual movement through the sky. This chapter describes archaeological evidence at Hohokam sites for marking of the sun’s cycles, especially during the solstices and equinoxes, with rock art and adobe architecture. Several locations are identified in the Phoenix region of Arizona, including mountains and prominent rock formations, where the solstices and equinoxes could be tracked through horizon alignments during sunrise and sunset and by light-and-shadow patterns during midday on those solar events. Several Hohokam villages also are described where ritual space was oriented according to basic cardinal directions.