Hohokam Culture

Hohokam culture included prehistoric North American Indians who lived approximately from 200 to 1400 CE in the semiarid region of present-day central and southern Arizona, largely along the Gila and Salt rivers. During the Pioneer Period the Hohokam lived in villages composed of widely scattered, individually built structures of wood, brush, and clay, each built over a shallow pit.

Farming:

They depended on the cultivation of corn, supplemented by the gathering of wild beans and fruits and some hunting. It was during this period that the first irrigation canal was built—a 3-mile (5-km) channel in the Gila River valley that directed river water to the fields. The Hohokam’s development of complex canal networks in the following millennium was unsurpassed in pre-Columbian North America; this agricultural engineering was one of their greatest achievements.

Pottery:

During the Pioneer Period they also developed several varieties of pottery made of buff clay and painted with red designs.

Decline:

The Hohokam people abandoned most of their settlements during the period between 1350 and 1450. It is thought that the Great Drought (1276–99), combined with a subsequent period of sparse and unpredictable rainfall that persisted until approximately 1450, contributed to this process.