War and Water: An Ecological Perspective on Hohokam Irrigation

ABSTRACTCompetition among Hohokam settlements may have been instrumental in the operation of the canal systems; this is proposed as an alternative to models suggesting the need for a central authority to coordinate irrigation-related activities. Settlements at the ends of the canals could have used force against those closer to the headgates to obtain a share of irrigation water, but if threatened by an outside group, all settlements on the same canal would act in concert to defend their common headgate. The irrigation system generated an ecological basis for the complementary opposition of independent segments. A shortage of suitable headgate locations selected for irrigation districts that could expand to include multiple settlements, and therefore more people. Architectural data on platform mounds, collected from archived records and early published reports, are consistent with important implications of the hypothesis. The use of irrigation in the Hohokam region did not select for a system of centraliz...

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