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National Geographic : 1967 May
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excavation at a Hohokam site in the Gila Val ley. I had the privilege of serving as field director of that excavation; thus began a life long interest in this forgotten culture. The site, then as now, was a wide expanse of undulating mounds and slopes in the open desert southeast of Phoenix (maps, opposite and page 699). It lay within the Gila River Indian Reservation, home of the gentle Pima. The Pima called it Skoaquik, Place of the Snakes-to us, Snaketown. And indeed snakes still inhabit the area, feeding on rodents that tunnel into the ancient trash mounds. The village itself had long ago vanished under the earth. Only the strangely brittle surface of the hillocks, paved with literally 674 thousands of potsherds, remained to prove that a settled people had once lived here. The Pima who helped us dig the site were irrigation farmers. Their forebears lived in round houses constructed very much in the manner of the Hohokam dwellings we soon encountered (page 686). The Pima way of life bore the immemorial stamp of the Southwest, a perfect adaptation to a difficult environment. Ancient Ball Court Poses a Question I asked myself: Is it possible that the Hoho kam were the first to put that stamp there? If so, when? And what happened to them? We found only partial answers during that first dig. But we also uncovered some surprises. A curious depression flanked by ridges lay not far from the largest of Snaketown's
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