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Like their cultural kin – the Mogollon and the Hohokam – in the deserts to the south, the earliest Anasazi peoples felt the currents of revolutionary change during the first half of the first millennium. Perhaps in a response to Mesoamerican influences from Mexico, they began to turn away from the nomadism of the ancient hunting and gathering life, the seasonal rounds calibrated to the movement of game and the ripening of wild plants, the material impoverishment imposed by the limitations of the burdens they could carry on their backs. They began living in small hamlets. They broke the land and took up agriculture. Over time, they acquired more possessions, stored food, made pottery, adopted the bow and arrow, domesticated dogs and turkeys. They still hunted and gathered, not as their only avenues for acquiring food, but as a complement to cultivated corn, beans, squash and other crops.
In the first half of their history, the Anasazi distinguished themselves primarily through the artistry of their basketry, which they crafted from the fibers of plants. In the second half, they left their mark on a much grander scale, through the construction of perhaps the most stunning prehistoric communities in the United States. The Anasazi would prove be resourceful, adaptable and, ultimately, the most enduring of the Pueblo cultural traditions
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The Hohokam peoples occupied a wide area of south-central Arizona from roughly Flagstaff south to the Mexican border. They are thought to have originally migrated north out of Mexico around 300 BC to become the most skillful irrigation farmers the Southwest ever knew.
The ingenious Hohokam developed an elaborate irrigation network using only stone instruments and organized labor. Before modern development obliterated this system, their predecessors commonly referred to them as the Canal Builders.
The Hohokam were creative artisans who became famous for their intricate work with shells obtained from the Gulf of California and the Pacific coast. They created a coiled pottery finished with a paddle and painted with red designs. They retained a great deal of Mesoamerican influence as can be seen in their use of ball courts and decorative feathers.
They also became entrepreneurs in a thriving trade with their neighbors, the Anasazi and the Mogollon. Their fate is unclear, but they seem to have disappeared from the archeological record between the first half of the 15th century and the time when the Spanish first came upon their descendents, Pima-speaking Indians still using the ancient irrigation techniques. Some of their original irrigation canals are still being used in the Phoenix area today!
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The Salado are believed to have been a group of wayfaring Anasazi who experienced moderate Mogollon influence and migrated into the Tonto Basin/Roosevelt Lake/Globe, Arizona region about 900 AD.
The Salado lived comfortably here for several centuries prospering because of their artistic skills with ceramics and the weaving of cotton fabrics. Their black-and-white-on-red polychrome pottery became the hallmark of their culture
For some reason, the Salado began migrating south around 1200 AD. After a brief sojourn with the Hohokam, to whom they brought pueblo architecture, pottery and burial styles, they dispersed into southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, then disappeared from tistoric record altogether.
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The Sinagua are the best known regional group of a tradition anthropologists refer to as the Western Anasazi. The Sinagua occupied an area between Flagstaff and Phoenix, Arizona between 500 and 1300 AD. They led a simple life based on corn farming and subsistence hunting and gathering at the periphery of the three major Southwest cultures
After volcanic activity improved soil conditions around 1000 AD, the Sinagua began to thrive by assimilating various elements from the major cultural groups. From the Hohokam they acquired village life and the use of ball courts; from the Anasazi they adopted cliff dwellings and water conservation practices; from the Mogollon they adopted pottery styles.
By the late 1450s, the same natural and social stresses that destroyed the other cultures of the region engulfed the Sinagua as well. By 1400, they had completely disappeared
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