Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-01T21:13:16.139Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Hohokam Canals at Pueblo Grande, Arizona*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Richard B. Woodbury
Richard B. Woodbury*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A cross section of the surviving traces of two large prehistoric canals near Pueblo Grande, Phoenix, shows one to have originally been V-shaped in profile, about 6 m. wide and 4 m. deep, and the other U-shaped in profile, about 10 m. wide and 3 m. deep. Both were dug into coarse gravel and the broader (north) canal had been lined with brown clay subsequent to its construction and initial period of use. There is a possibility that the V-shaped South Canal was built first and perhaps abandoned when the North Canal was built. Both canals show evidence of repeated filling and clearing out, either by natural erosion due to a periodically swifter current or by the efforts of the Indians using the canals. Sherds under the banks and in the canals were too few for conclusive dating of construction and use, but suggest that this took place during the Soho phase of the Hohokam Classic period, that is, during the late 12th and the 13th centuries. Hohokam canals much older than this are known, and the occupation of nearby Pueblo Grande began earlier and lasted later than the Soho phase.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , October 1960 , pp. 267 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1960

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Contribution No. 32 from the University of Arizona Arid Lands Program, supported in part by the Rockefeller Foundation.

References

Haury, E. W. 1937. The Snaketown Canal, in “Excavations at Snaketown: Material Culture,” by Gladwin, H. S. and others, pp. 50–8. Medallion Papers No. 25. Gila Pueblo, Globe.Google Scholar
Haury, E. W. 1945. The Excavation of Los Muertos and Neighboring Ruins in the Salt River Valley, Southern Arizona. Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. 24, No. 1. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hayden, J. D. 1957. Excavations, 1940, at University Indian Ruin, Tucson, Arizona. Southwestern Monuments Association, Technical Series, Vol. 5. Globe.Google Scholar
Hodge, F. W. 1893. Prehistoric Irrigation in Arizona. American Anthropologist, o.s., Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 323–30. Washington.Google Scholar
Judd, N. M. 1931. Arizona's Prehistoric Canals from the Air. Explorations and Field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1930, pp. 157–66. Washington.Google Scholar
Karns, H. J. 1954. Unknown Arizona and Sonora, 1693–1721. An English Translation of Part II of “Luz de Tierra Incógnita” by Captain Juan Mateo Manje. Arizona Silhouettes, Tucson.Google Scholar
Patrick, H. R. 1903. The Ancient Canal Systems and Pueblos of the Salt River Valley, Arizona. Bulletin of the Phoenix Free Museum, No. 1. Phoenix.Google Scholar
Rusling, J. F. 1877. The Great West and Pacific Coast. Sheldon and Co., New York.Google Scholar
Turney, O. A. 1929. Prehistoric Irrigation in Arizona. Arizona State Historian, Phoenix.Google Scholar