Hohokam Ritual and Economic Transformation: Ceramic Evidence from the Phoenix Basin, Arizona

Abstract

The Hohokam regional system in southern and central Arizona was marked by a dense network of ballcourts during the eleventh century. The ritual ballgames provided venues for social and economic interaction that probably included the barter and exchange of thousands of clay containers each year. Previous ceramic evidence has shown that pottery production was highly concentrated with far-flung distribution, although by the twelfth century the ballcourt network had collapsed. New data from Las Colinas, a ballcourt village situated near the lower Salt River, demonstrate that the organization of pottery manufacture and distribution radically changed in the lower Salt River valley just at the time the Las Colinas ballcourt was abandoned, implying that the ritual ballgames had been a central component of the Hohokam regional economy.