{"title":"The Iconography of Connectivity Between the Hohokam World and Its Southern Neighbors","authors":"Aaron M. Wright","doi":"10.1007/s10814-021-09159-z","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Archaeologists have long compared the Hohokam world of the North American Southwest to contemporary traditions in Mesoamerica and West Mexico. A degree of cultural connectivity between the Southwest and Mesoamerica is evident in similarities in public architecture, ceramic technology and design, ritual paraphernalia, and subsistence, among other qualities. Researchers commonly frame this connectivity in economic or cultural evolutionary terms that position Hohokam communities as somehow descendant from or dependent on more complexly and hierarchically organized societies far to the south. In this paper, I examine this connectivity through the lens of iconography to show that shared religious themes and archetypes were strands within the nexus. I focus on three iconographic subjects in Hohokam media—serpents, flowers, and “pipettes”—each of which materializes seemingly Mesoamerican religious concepts. From a careful consideration of the inception and breadth of each, I argue that Hohokam artisans began to portray these subjects in concert with a religious revitalization movement that drew a degree of inspiration from the south. However, while the iconography may have been new to Hohokam media, the religious themes were not. I show that the iconography references Archaic religious archetypes and cosmological principles that probably accompanied the spread of agriculture millennia before the formation of the Hohokam world. Rather than representing a new religion, I suggest Hohokam artisans materialized these long-established and unquestioned principles in novel iconographic ways as a means of naturalizing and ordaining the rapid social change that accompanied the religious revitalization movement.</p>","PeriodicalId":47005,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Archaeological Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Archaeological Research","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-021-09159-z","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Archaeologists have long compared the Hohokam world of the North American Southwest to contemporary traditions in Mesoamerica and West Mexico. A degree of cultural connectivity between the Southwest and Mesoamerica is evident in similarities in public architecture, ceramic technology and design, ritual paraphernalia, and subsistence, among other qualities. Researchers commonly frame this connectivity in economic or cultural evolutionary terms that position Hohokam communities as somehow descendant from or dependent on more complexly and hierarchically organized societies far to the south. In this paper, I examine this connectivity through the lens of iconography to show that shared religious themes and archetypes were strands within the nexus. I focus on three iconographic subjects in Hohokam media—serpents, flowers, and “pipettes”—each of which materializes seemingly Mesoamerican religious concepts. From a careful consideration of the inception and breadth of each, I argue that Hohokam artisans began to portray these subjects in concert with a religious revitalization movement that drew a degree of inspiration from the south. However, while the iconography may have been new to Hohokam media, the religious themes were not. I show that the iconography references Archaic religious archetypes and cosmological principles that probably accompanied the spread of agriculture millennia before the formation of the Hohokam world. Rather than representing a new religion, I suggest Hohokam artisans materialized these long-established and unquestioned principles in novel iconographic ways as a means of naturalizing and ordaining the rapid social change that accompanied the religious revitalization movement.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Archaeological Research publishes the most recent international research summaries on a broad range of topics and geographical areas. The articles are intended to present the current state-of-the-discipline in regard to a particular geographic area or specific research topic or theme. This authoritative review journal improves access to the growing body of information and literature through the publication of original critical articles, each in a 25-40 page format.2-Year Impact Factor: 4.056 (2017) 5-Year Impact Factor: 4.512 (2017)2 out of 85 on the Anthropology listIncluded in the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) PLUS The European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS) was created and developed by European researchers under the coordination of the Standing Committee for the Humanities (SCH) of the European Science Foundation (ESF). https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/erihplus/about/indexSCImago Journal and Country Rank (SJR) 2018: 1.7102 out of 263 on the Archeology (Arts and Humanities) list3 out of 254 on the Archeology list2 out of 131 on the General Arts and Humanities listSJR is a measure of the journal’s relative impact in its field, based on its number of citations and number of articles per publication year.Source Normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2018: 2.112The SNIP measures contextual citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a subject field. The impact of a single citation is given higher value in subject areas where citations are less likely, and vice versa.CiteScore 2018: 3.86Rated ''A'' in the Australian Research Council Humanities and Creative Arts Journal List. For more information, visit: http://www.arc.gov.au/era/journal_list.htm
SCImago Journal and Country Rank (SJR) 2011 1.227 Archeology 1 out of 96 Archeology (Arts and Humanities) 1 out of 59 Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) 1 out of 243