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The occurrence of nonlocal objects, raw materials, and ideas in the southwestern United States (U.S. SW) has long been recognized as evidence of interaction between prehispanic peoples of this region and those of greater Mesoamerica. Although many archaeologists have analyzed the directionality and potential means by which these objects and concepts moved across the landscape, few have assessed the degree to which Mesoamerican practices and traditional assemblages remained intact as the artifacts and ideas moved farther from their places of origin. The current study analyzes the distribution and deposition of blue-green stone mosaics, a craft technology that was well established in Mesoamerica by the Late Preclassic period (300 BC–AD 250) and spread to the U.S. SW by the start of the Hohokam Pioneer period (AD 475). We assess the spatial distribution, contextual deposition, and morphology of mosaics at sites within Hohokam Canal System 2, located in the Phoenix Basin of Arizona. We use these data to infer mosaics’ social value and function within Hohokam social structure. Analyses suggest that, although the technology of mosaic making may have originated in Mesoamerica, the contexts and ways in which mosaics were used in the Hohokam regional system were decidedly Hohokam.

Mortuary rituals are compared and contrasted in order to better understand social interaction between the Tucson Basin Hohokam of southern Arizona and the Trincheras tradition populations of northern Sonora. This interaction is explored through the examination of ideas about personhood and embodiment, and their relationship to the biological profiles and posthumous treatments of individuals during the Hohokam Classic period (AD 1150–1450) and the occupation of Cerro de Trincheras (AD 1300–1450). In both areas, cremation was the main burial custom, and both groups had complex, multistage cremation rituals, in which burning of the body played only a small part. Examination of rich archaeological data and well-excavated contexts at these sites revealed remarkable similarities and differences in body treatment during the mortuary ritual. Tucson Basin Hohokam mortuary practices suggest a strongerconnection to,andremembrance of,the deceased within smaller social groups. In contrast, mortuary practices at Cerro de Trincheras emphasize similarities among the various cremated individuals, with rituals directed more toward the broader social group. Results suggest that the two groups were fundamentally similar in how they treated the bodies of the dead during the cremation process, but different in how the dead were remembered and commemorated.

Recent archaeological efforts to explain the emergence and persistence of social inequality have been hampered by little information about how wealth was transmitted across generations, and how it may have accumulated or diminished over time. Building on studies that have shown domestic architecture to be an excellent material expression of household wealth, we provide a method for reconstructing the amount of labor invested in house construction among the Hohokam of southern Arizona. We also account for different architectural styles from different time periods. To illustrate the utility of the method for addressing broader social issues, we investigate the relationship among population increases, resource shortages, and wealth differentials at Pueblo Grande—one of the preeminent settlements in the Hohokam region. Inequality at Pueblo Grande was tracked over time and compared to similar results at the Grewe site. High-status households at both sites were distinguished architecturally by larger and, in some instances, more elaborate houses. The proximity of these households to public areas for ceremonial expression further suggests that access to ritual played a key role in creating and maintaining inequality in Hohokam society.

Recent examinations of more than 13,000 disk beads from mortuary contexts determined that macroscopic examination was not always enough to distinguish shell, stone, and fired-clay beads. Using replication experiments and scanning electron microscopy energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS), we update the 80-year-old conclusions of Emil Haury, who defined features distinctive to bead manufacture. With this renewed confidence in materials identification, we analyzed the distributions of disk beads made from shell, stone, and fired clay among Hohokam inhumations and cremations at the Yuma Wash, Honey Bee Village, and Wetlands sites in the Tucson Basin. Not everyone was buried with disk beads, but all age groups were represented among those who were buried with beads. Some people were buried with only stone, or only shell, or only fired-clay beads, although more were buried with beads of some combination of these three materials. In this article, we consider why fired-clay beads were added to the mix and conclude that they were made as acceptable substitutes for stone beads, not for deceptive reasons concerning wealth or status, but rather in imitation of stone to honor a tradition that could not otherwise be efficiently met.

The origins and evolution of market-based economies remain poorly understood in part because the data from nascent markets are scarce and methods available to archaeologists are underdeveloped. Studying how markets evolved is vital for understanding the origins of a process that dominates modern economies around the world and has significant policy implications. We show how refining abstract models of exchange networks with household-scale distributional analyses and regional-scale computational agent-based models (ABMs) can lead to new understandings about the organization of a prehistoric economy. The Sedentary-period Hohokam of central Arizona—particularly for the middle Sacaton phase (A.D. 1020–1100)—have been identified as a middle-range society that traded pottery in a market-based economy, but the structure of their exchange networks is not well understood. We analyzed ceramic data from recent archaeological excavations at two sites in the Phoenix Basin using new network-inspired distributional approaches to evaluate exchange systems. Initial results were then assessed using simulated data generated by an ABM of Hohokam exchange networks. Final results indicated that the best-fitting ABM model configurations were those consistent with openly accessed market-based exchange and contributed new insights into the influence of natural landscape barriers such as the Salt River on exchange in the Phoenix Basin.