Big houses deserve big graces. As for the record-breaking prehistoric attraction, the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument is the largest structure built by the Hohokam people, who also are well-known of the place found it as a place to ponder by looking at the heavens. Resulting to a four-storey building made of caliche materials, its walls are all duly designed to face the four cardinal points of the compass for great views of the Moon and the Sun. Thus, the finishing touches of the building made the Spaniards name it as the “Great House” considering the mysterious features of the house, plus the remains of the inhabitants through times of planting, harvest and celebration.
The People Behind the Making
The people behind the sky watching idea are first found out by Archeologist Emil Haury who also studied the Hohokam tribe and culture. These people according to Haury are those hunt-gatherers which inherited traits from the archaic hunters in Arizona several years ago, then made him name them as the “First Masters of the American Desert” from the Mesoamerican civilization. Moreover, by AD 300, Hohokam culture was carried and passed along the people of Gila and Salt Rivers and other tributaries. Getting similar aspects of living, these people act like those of south-western farming people living in permanent settlements. These kinds of people are also engaged in making pottery until trading their products however they are also the ones who tamed the rivers with irrigation canals. Though it made some damages, it then regulated the irrigation communities and systems to support farming to survive the hot climate. Though in other areas without perennial streams, diversion of the drylands are done through tapping of groundwater and storm runoff that still created water deposits.
The Practice of Trading
On other practices, these people also cooperated well in trade by standing along natural routes between present-day California, the Colorado Plateau, and Great Plains and northen Mexico. The Hohokam tribe used trading mostly in jewelry and pottery for which they received variety of items like the Shells from the Gulf of California. These kinds of shells were the most common as they also used it as their exchange medium in most places. Other traded materials are coins, mirrors, copper belts, Macaws, and the shallow, oval pits which are all found around major villages. Other than that, games also are the popular activities of the tribe including ball games in which the Aztecs have also played and similar ballcourts in far north located in Wupatki as an extensive Hohokam culture, all exercised in their halls.
Leaving The “All Used Up”
Leaving an empty shell of the once-flourishing village, most of remains are all used up, as it is meant after the Hohokam meaning “all used up”. After few visits of European-Americans until the late 19th century, it pushed for the action of legal protection so in 1892 the monument became the first ever archeological preserve in North America, revealing the secrets of ancient people who gathered around the place.
As for the created symbol of art and history, the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument would forever resemblance the best efforts of its builders. Also, despite of centuries of neglects and weathering, the “Great House” always stands its grace as a prominent model of the technology and social organization all shared by the Hohokam people.
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