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The Hohokam and Mogollon Cultures. The Hohokam and Mogollon cultures (c. AD 200-1450) were two of the great farming traditions of the ancient American Southwest. The Hohokam made their home in the desert basins of southern Arizona, along the Salt and Gila rivers, where they created some of the most extensive irrigation systems of the ancient world: hundreds of miles of canals, dug with stone tools, that watered fields of maize, beans, squash, and cotton in the middle of the desert. Their largest towns, such as Snaketown and later Casa Grande, centered on great houses and ballcourts that show deep ties to the civilizations of Mexico.
The Mogollon, named for the mountain range of New Mexico and Arizona, lived across the rugged uplands to the east. They farmed the mountain valleys, built villages of pithouses and later stone pueblos, and produced one of the glories of ancient American art: Mimbres pottery, bowls painted in black on white with geometric designs and lively figures of animals and people, which were buried with the dead, a hole ritually punched through each base.
Both cultures adapted brilliantly to harsh lands. The Hohokam traded shells from the Gulf of California far into the interior and mastered floodwater farming beside their canals; the Mogollon ranged across deserts, forests, and high valleys, mixing farming with hunting and gathering as the land allowed. At their height, around AD 1000-1300, their towns and fields supported tens of thousands of people.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the great centers were abandoned, as drought, floods that wrecked the canals, and social upheaval reshaped the Southwest. The peoples of the region regrouped into new communities, and the O'odham of the Sonoran Desert are held to be the heirs of the Hohokam. The ruins of Casa Grande and the painted bowls of the Mimbres remain the most eloquent witnesses of these desert civilizations.
Archaeology Southwest: Archaeological Cultures in the Southwest
National Park Service: Mogollon
Smarthistory: The Mogollon: An Introduction
LibreTexts: The Southwest