Arts and Culture of Ancient Southern Arizona Hohokam Indians

The Hohokam Native American culture flourished in southern Arizona from the sixth through fifteenth centuries. Hohokam artifacts, architecture, and other material culture provide archaeologists with clues for identifying where the Hohokam lived, interpreting how they adapted to the Sonoran Desert for centuries, and explaining why their culture mysteriously disappeared. In this presentation Dart illustrates the material culture of the Hohokam and present possible interpretations about their relationships to the natural world, time reckoning, religious practices, beliefs, and deities, and possible reasons for the eventual demise of their way of life.

Allen “Al” Dart, a Registered Professional Archaeologist, has worked and volunteered in Arizona and New Mexico archaeology since 1975. He is the state cultural resources specialist/archaeologist for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Arizona and the volunteer executive director of Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, a Tucson nonprofit organization that he founded in 1993 to provide educational and scientific programs in Southwestern archaeology, history, and cultures. Al has received the Arizona Governor’s Award in Public Archaeology and the Arizona Archaeological Society’s Professional Archaeologist of the Year Award for his efforts to bring archaeology and history to the public.