Hisat’sinom: Ancient Peoples in a Land without Water

Abstract

Hisat'sinom: Ancient Peoples in a Land without Water Christian E. Downum (Editor) School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, 2012 196 pp. $59.95 Cloth, $24.95 PaperThis is a well-written and beautifully illustrated volume focusing on a relatively small but geographically diverse portion of the US Southwest-the Sin Agua culture area on the Mogollon Rim and immediately east of the San Francisco Peaks and present-day Flagstaff, Arizona. The focus is principally on the interplay between the harsh environment and Native American adaptive resilience from 400 CE or the advent of agriculture to no later than 1300 CE. Although the Paleo-Indian and archaic periods are represented in this zone, the material manifestations found here are also apparent in other better known areas (Chapter 8). Two aspects set this region apart: the lack of water, even by US Southwest measures, and its societal crossroads location, linking the heartland of the Hohokam with that of the Anazasi of Chaco Canyon. Because of this setting, it captures in microcosm much of what is revealed about the ancient social history of the US Southwest more broadly.The book is composed of 20 well-crafted essays by 25 contributors introducing and developing a comprehensive and encompassing set of topics meaningful to both scholar and well-informed layperson. A primary strength of the volume is its thoughtful assessments by several Hopi authors drawing from their own accounts of the ethnohistoric record as well as the ethnographic present (Chapters 2, 3, and 14). The tensions between academic archaeology-the arti-facts-and the Hopi way-the ancestral stories and their long-lived occupants-are not dismissed. As Lyle Balenquay notes, being Hopi was not a right but a privilege, hard earned, at great cost of effort (p 12). Too, the role of Northern Arizona University and the Museum of Northern Arizona pervade the volume by way of faculty and staffcommitment during decades of survey and excavation in this region. Christian Downum has done a fine service in envisioning this book.The geological backdrop for the cultural geography revolves around Sunset Crater, a volcanic blow paleomagnetically dated to 1080 CE and active for no more than 50 years (Chapter 5). The archaeology is significantly identified by pre- and post-Sunset Crater, as the intensity of occupation and agriculture markedly spikes for a hundred and fifty years following the generous deposition of cinder covering an extensive area. This cinder mulch allowed gardens to retain dry farming moisture over the thinnest of soils when the elevated bedrock prevented the further percolation of water deeper and away from the shallow root systems of maize-the latter a clear staple for most all US Southwest ancestral populations. Gregory Brown (Chapter 16) shows how linear and sometimes rectilinear stone alignments were positioned to shield juvenile corn plants from the persistent and sometimes severe spring and summer winds, rather than oriented to the slope angles of the terrain; the latter correlation one usually made in the semiarid world where infrequent cloud bursts and subsequent erosional runoffare credited with linear or contour alignments of rock (cf. Evenari, Shanan, and Tadmor 1982).Historically, during the 30s and 40s, Harold Colton founded and directed the Museum of Northern Arizona, and along with John McGregor defined the Sinagua culture. The black sands associated with the 1080 CE blast were viewed as the catalyst for increased agricultural production and populations, with the significant in-migration of others from neighboring culture areas (Chapter 10). Recent assessments strongly suggest that actual movements of peoples were likely less pronounced, but the exchange of goods and the ideas that they revealed were a principal change in the region. Michael O'Hara's chapter (9) provides a highly condensed and helpful introduction to the material remains. Agricultural populations were well established prior to the Sunset Crater eruption most prominently identified at Winoma Village with 36 pithouses, a three-room pueblo and perhaps an early ballcourt. …