They were one of the great irrigation societies in the world and built one of the largest canal systems anywhere in the Americas, according to Paul Fish, a curator of archaeology at the Arizona State Museum. Hohokam was essentially the northern edge of Mesoamerica, which included Mexico and Central America. The goal was finding a chronology that would link classic signature of the Hohokam â the distinctive red-on-buff pottery â that appeared throughout central and southern Arizona, an area roughly the size of South Carolina. "For a man with no academic training (in archaeology), he was willing to reexamine things, and even back down on some of his ideas if he came up against a wall of facts or new evidence, and would move on to something different."Īt Snaketown, Gladwin and Haury helped to define the Hohokam as a society. To his credit, Thompson said, Gladwin was never afraid of revisiting his earlier theories and ideas. "You never knew how much of it was tongue-in-cheek, or if he was serious or just trying to get academics out of their stodgy ways of looking at things and trying something new," Thompson said. The book was a huge best-seller with the public, but cost Gladwin some of his support in academia. One example was his 1947 book, "Men out of Asia," Gladwin's explanation of how remnants of Alexander the Great's army in India, and others, migrated from the Old World to the Americas. And the more they got annoyed, the more fun it was for him," Thompson said. just to annoy the hell out of his academic colleagues. "He enjoyed dreaming up utterly preposterous explanations. Thompson said Gladwin had a comic streak and loved to make fun of people. But he was baffling to a lot of academics." And he was willing to put his money behind it all. He had ideas on how to take on big problems and solve them. "He came out of business and had a great intellect. "Gladwin was interesting but very complex," Thompson said. Gladwin made Haury the assistant director of the Gila Pueblo Foundation and put him in charge of field operations of Snaketown when the excavations began there in 1934. Haury was already emerging as one of the central figures in southwestern archaeology by the time he finished his doctorate in 1934 at Harvard. Haury was a student of two seminal figures in Arizona archaeology, Byron Cummings, the head of the UA archaeology department and director of the Arizona State Museum, and Andrew Douglass, the founder of the UA Laboratory of Tree Ring Research. He also enlisted Haury, a young archaeologist who had graduated from the UA in 1927 and earned his master's in 1928 here as well. Gladwin established the Gila Pueblo Foundation in Globe, Ariz., and embarked on a survey to learn more about the Hohokam. Thompson said Gladwin made his way to Arizona and the ruins at Casa Grande around 1927, and was interested in the red-on-buff colored pottery shards littering not only Casa Grande but much of the desert southwest. "He sold it at the right time," said Raymond Thompson, the director emeritus of the Arizona State Museum who as a graduate student had met Gladwin a number of times. He had made a fortune as a stock broker and sold his seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1922. Gladwin came to archaeology later in life. In the 1930s, Snaketown became the focus of two key individuals who wanted to learn more about the Hohokam and their influence in the Southwest: Harold Gladwin and Emil Haury. That includes illuminating the lives of those who lived in prehistoric communities in much greater detail than ever before. It also began a sea change in how archaeological sites are now excavated and interpreted. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the first excavations at Snaketown, the large ancient Hohokam settlement on the present-day Gila River Indian Community, near Chandler, Ariz.įor archaeologists, including those at The University of Arizona and the Arizona State Museum, Snaketown represents a significant key to understanding the Hohokam, who lived in the Southwest from as early as A.D 500 until about A.D.
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