Religion on the Rocks: Hohokam Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Social Transformation

by Aaron M. Wright

Winner of the Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Prize

Religion on the Rocks: Hohokam Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Social Transformation by Aaron M. Wright https://t.co/yDXJ56rFEK pic.twitter.com/ykdzh5ySJD

— Bradshaw Foundation (@BradshawFND) June 5, 2018

We are nearly all intrigued by the petroglyphs and pictographs of the American Southwest, and we commonly ask what they mean.'Religion on the Rocks' redirects our attention to the equally important matter of what compelled ancient peoples to craft rock art in the first place. 

To examine this question, Aaron Wright presents a case study from Arizona's South Mountains, an area once flanked by several densely populated Hohokam villages. Synthesizing results from recent archaeological surveys, he explores how the mountains' petroglyphs were woven into the broader cultural landscape and argues that the petroglyphs are relics of a bygone ritual system in which people vied for prestige and power by controlling religious knowledge. 

The features and strategic placement of the rock art suggest this dimension of Hohokam ritual was participatory and prominent in village life. 

Around AD 1100, however, petroglyph creation and other ritual practices began to wane, denoting a broad transformation of the Hohokam social world. 

Wright's examination of the South Mountains petroglyphs offers a novel narrative of how Hohokam villagers negotiated a concentration of politico-religious authority around platform mounds. 

Readers will come away with a better understanding of the Hohokam legacy and a greater appreciation for rock art's value to anthropology.

Review:

There are winds of change in rock art research, and this volume establishes a new threshold for investigations in which rock art will be used more inclusively in archaeological studies. Traditionally due to a variety of factors, rock art investigations in the United States have been conducted within a nearly bounded sphere of their own by "rock art specialists," where publications are ignored or receive only passing reference by mainstream archaeologists, to the utter detriment of archaeological knowledge. The model Wright's book provides for integrating rock art with social patterning, religion, and ritual is one of this volume's greatest contributions. Beautifully and clearly written, engaging the reader from start to finish, Religion on the Rocks, winner of the Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Prize, deserves space on the bookshelf of every Southwestern archaeologist.

Polly Schaafsma, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, Sante Fe, NM.

Visit the American Rock Art Archive:

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/america/index.php