Later in the summer, using holes that they formed in bedrock, the Hohokam pounded mesquite beans into flour. In early summer, the Hohokam eagerly collected saguaro and prickly pear fruits. They made digging sticks of durable ironwood to retrieve tuberous roots and collected leaves and other plant parts for medicines, food, and dyes. They hunted bighorn sheep, deer, and other animals there. A day's walk into the hills provided the people with many important resources. When they weren't tending to their crops, the Hohokam explored and exploited the environment around them. On and near the slopes they also stacked up rocks and planted agave and yucca in the piles. They used every possible space to grow crops, even building small terraces and check dams on hill slopes to collect and divert rainfall runoff toward their fields. Near their villages, on floodplains or alluvial slopes, the Hohokam established fields of corn, beans, squash, and cotton. The Hohokam lived in villages near the base of the Tucson Mountains, close to sources of water like the Santa Cruz River or Brawley Wash. So what did the Hohokam do in these mountains? Most of the sites show no signs of habitation-no houses, no fire pits. Tools and pottery like these are common in the Tucson Mountains they number in the hundreds, maybe even the thousands. The Hohokam left these artifacts at the site over 600 years ago. Gregonis, Archaeological Consultantįrom sonorensis, Volume 16, Number 1 (Spring 1996)īeneath the creosote and cactus around the Desert Museum, battered stones, sharp-edged pieces of rock, stones for grinding, and fragments of pottery can be found.
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