September 25, 2017
By Roger Kearney, Courtesy of Arizona Archeaology Society – Desert Foothills Chapter
PhD Aaron Wright to Discuss Lower Gila River Hohokam and Patayan Cultures
Aaron Wright
The October 11, 2017 meeting of the Arizona Archaeology Society – Desert Foothills Chapter (AAS-DFC) will feature a presentation by Tucson preservation archaeologist PhD Aaron Wright. Aaron’s research is currently focused on the Hohokam and Patayan traditions in southwestern Arizona. He is specifically interested in the cultural landscape of the lower Gila River, which is renowned for a unique mixture of Patayan and Hohokam settlements, dense galleries of world-class rock art, and numerous enigmatic geoglyphs. Wright is the lead researcher on his Archaeology Southwest’s long-term goal of establishing a Great Bend of the Gila National Monument.
The public is invited to the meeting at no charge. Refreshments available at 7:00 p.m. and the meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. Meetings usually end by 9 p.m. The meeting will be held in the community room (Maitland Hall) at The Good Shepard of the Hills Episcopal Church, 6502 East Cave Creek Road, Cave Creek, AZ 85331 (near the Dairy Queen).
About the Presentation
Wright’s presentation is entitled The Western Range of the Red-on-Buff Culture, Redux. Prehistoric Southwestern Arizona is the interface between Patayan and Hohokam material culture and settlement patterns. Presumably, the ways-of-life that are tied to each of those traditions. Still, the western frontier of the Hohokam World remains little studied and therefore poorly defined. This presentation reviews the history of research on this topic revisiting the development and eventual demise of primary Hohokam villages along the lower Gila River.
About the Speaker
Aaron Wright is a Preservation Archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest, a nonprofit organization in Tucson. He earned a MA in 2006 and PhD in 2011, both from Washington State University. He is a co-editor of Leaving Mesa Verde: Peril and Change in the Thirteenth-Century Southwest (University of Arizona Press, 2010) and author of Religion on the Rocks: Hohokam Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Social Transformation (University of Utah Press, 2014). This later work won the 2012 Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Book Prize. His most recent book is the co-authored The Great Bend of the Gila: Contemporary Native American Connections to an Ancestral Landscape (Archaeology Southwest, 2016).
About AAS – DFC
Meetings are free and open to the public, except for the holiday party in December. The AAS-DFC meetings are held on the second Wednesday of each month, September through May. For additional information, visit www.azarchsoc.wildapricot.org/desertfoothills
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