Snaketown

The site known as Snaketown is located in Arizona near the city of Phoenix. This site was populated by the Hohokam, which means "Those who have gone," culture. This site is said to be the most significant of the Hohokam Indian sites and has been excavated twice to date. It was first excavated in 1934 by the Gila Pueblo Foundation and then again in 1964. The 1964 excavation of Snaketown was headed by Emil Haury, Assistant Director of Gila Pueblo. Under him was E.B. Sayles, his assistant, Erik K. Reed, and Irwin and Julian Hayden. Information on these excavations can be found at the State Museum.

Snaketown is a one-half mile by three-quarters mile piece of land located by the Gila River Valley of southern Arizona. The Hohokam Culture which populated Snaketown is believed to have lived from about 2100 B.P. until the 1500's.

Most of the population lived in what are called "Pit Houses", such as the structure pictured here. They constructed these pit houses similar to the way that the Mogollon pit houses were constructed. The only differences were that the Hohokam pit houses were more shallow and larger. The pit houses were made up of logs covered in reeds, saplings and mud.

The Hohokam were big in agriculture even though they lived in an area with dry sandy soil, rugged volcanic mountains and slow running rivers. The crops that they grew included beans, squash, tobacco, cotton and corn. The Hohokam had to make this sandy soil fertile by channeling water from the local river into a series of man-made canals which brought water to their crops. The canals were made shallow and wide stretching up to ten miles in length. In order to get the water to transfer from the river to the canals it was necessary to make a dam. The dams that they used were made out of woven mats which turned the water from the rivers to the fields.

It was difficult for archaeologists to divide the pottery into groups, because a few of them crossed the lines between two different groups. The pottery did this by containing certain elements of two different groups. This showed phase-to-phase changes between several periods of time. It was said that if it was not for this crossing over of these elements the evolutionary story of the Hohokam Indians in Snaketown would be a lot less convincing.

An interesting feature of Snaketown are the ball courts. These ball courts are in the shape of an oval bowl, formed by two parallel banks. Each are about 60 meters long, 33 meters apart, and 2.5 meters high. These embankments did not meet on the ends, they went to the ground. The number of ball courts increased through time which means that either it was met with rising favor as time passed or that the number of late villages increased over the early ones due to a rise in population.