Casa Grande Ruins

Learning a little about the history of Arizona. I think I know more about Arizona then I do my home in Idaho. How sad is that? The kids enjoy going and seeing different sites. Its been very informative.

Hohokam culture, prehistoric North American Indians who lived approximately from ad 200 to 1400 in the semiarid region of present-day central and southern Arizona, largely along the Gila and Salt rivers. The term Hohokam is said to be Pima for “those who have vanished.” The culture is customarily divided into four developmental periods: Pioneer (ad 200–775), Colonial (775–975), Sedentary (975–1150), and Classic (from approximately 1150 to sometime between 1350 and 1450).

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. They depended on the cultivation of corn (maize), supplemented by the gathering of wild beans and fruits and some hunting. Although floodwater irrigation may have been practiced earlier, 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. During the Pioneer Period they also developed several varieties of pottery.