Sending the Spirits Home: The Archaeology of Hohokam Mortuary Practices [Hardcover]

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

This data-rich monograph provides new and stimulating perspectives on the Hohokam people and their mortuary practices. It breaks new ground by using the knowledge of descendent peoples to generate archaeologically testable hypotheses; demonstrating the need for mortuary analyses conducted at a regional scale; and synthesizing of the interaction of beliefs, ideology, social organization, and ecology in determining Hohokam mortuary practices. Various chapters discuss body treatment, mortuary furniture and goods, mortuary architecture, and cemeteries, and numerous figures help document the variability of Hohokam practices.  

The study synthesizes data from various excavations, applied archaeology, and cultural resource management projects. With its review of past research and ethnographic accounts along with line drawings of mortuary features and artifacts,Sending the Spirits Homeprovides tools for the adoption of standardized protocols needed to facilitate cross-project comparisons on which future regional syntheses can be based. Although written for archaeologists, the book does not require a specialist’s knowledge to appreciate its insights into these early people of the Southwest. 

“An especially welcome addition to the body of Hohokam literature. . . Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this work is the appreciation that the reader gains for the complexity of human mortuary behavior.”—New Mexico Historical Review

“This terrific volume presents a descriptive, interpretive, and synthetic presentation of Hohokam mortuary archaeology that is impressive in its breadth and scope…. [and] provides a model for whatlóL