This class will cover four main topics:
1) "Archaeology and Cultures of Arizona" will summarize and interpret the archaeology of Arizona from the earliest Paleoindians through Archaic period hunters and foragers, the transition to true village life, and the Formative period Puebloan, Mogollon, Sinagua, Hohokam, Salado, and Patayan archaeological cultures and their relationships to Arizona’s historical Native American peoples, to provide context for the archaeological cultures of southern Arizona.
2) "Arts and Culture of Ancient Southern Arizona Hohokam Indians" will focus on artifacts, architecture, and other material culture of southern Arizona's Hohokam culture. Items the Hohokam left behind provide archaeologists with clues for interpreting their relationships to the natural world, time reckoning, religious practices, beliefs, and deities, and possible reasons for the eventual demise of their way of life.
3) "Ancient Native American Pottery of Southern Arizona" will provide details about Native American ceramic styles that characterized specific eras in southern Arizona precontact and postcontact eras. The instructor will discuss how archaeologists use pottery for dating archaeological sites and interpreting ancient lifeways of the ancient Early Ceramic and Hohokam cultures, and of the historical Piman (Tohono O'odham and Akimel O'odham), Yuman (including Mohave and Maricopa), and Apachean peoples.
4) “Set in Stone but Not in Meaning: Southwestern Indian Rock Art" features illustrations of southwestern US pictographs (rock paintings) and petroglyphs (symbols carved or pecked on rocks) and discussion of how specific rock art symbols are interpreted differently from popular, scientific, and modern Native American perspectives.
