SUMMARY
We may characterize the Hohokam as follows: They were a prehistoric agricultural people of southern Arizona who may have been the descendants of the western branch of the ancient food-gathering people of the Cochise [Culture]. They made an amazing adjustment to an unfavorable environment through the use of an extensive canal system. They lived in one-room houses of wattle-and-daub construction with depressed floors and covered side passages or vestibules. Some big houses built during the earliest period may have sheltered more than one family or they may have been ceremonial structures. There were large courts where it is thought that a ball game similar to that of the Maya was played.
Pottery was made by the paddle-and-anvil technique and fired in an [oxidizing atmosphere]. Undecorated plain ware was mostly buff, although ranging in shade from gray to brown. Decorated pottery usually had designs in red paint on a buff background. In an early period there was a rare polychrome ware which had red and yellow designs on a gray background. Figurines were also made of clay.
Stone work was well developed. Stone vessels, often with fine carving, were widely made. Well carved palettes are a distinctive [trait] of the [culture]. Mosaic plaques or mirrors, made of pyrites crystals, believed to have been imported from the south, were often used as funeral offerings.
Shell was widely used in the manufacture of ornaments, particularly bracelets. It was usually ornamented by carving, but in a few cases an etching technique was employed. Weaving was apparently well developed, but only a few specimens have been preserved, so our information on this point is scanty.
Disposal of the dead was by cremation. Funerary offerings were burned with the body, and included pottery, figurines, palettes and pyrites mirrors. Ashes, calcined bones, and offerings were gathered together after the cremation and buried. Burial was at first in trenches, later in pits or urns.
About 1300 A. D., Pueblo people moved into the Hohokam country and for the next hundred years the two groups lived together. There was some amalgamation of the two cultures, but in most important respects they remained distinct in spite of the closeness of the association. About 1400 A. D. the newcomers moved away. We have no clear information as to just what happened to the Hohokam after that time, but it is possible that they may have remained in the same general vicinity and have been the forerunners of the Pima and Papago Indians who occupied that territory at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards.