I'm Paid for This

The company Raphael works for recently held a site tour for professional archaeologists in Tucson. As professional as they can be, I guess. Anyway, as someone somewhere apparently considers me a professional, I got to skip out on work to go.

This particular site is a Hohokam indian village site occupied somewhere around 1100 to 1300 years ago. The Hohokam lived in southern Arizona for hundreds of years in the basins cradling Phoenix and Tucson. They are known for creating enormous canal systems to water their agricultural fields and also for their elaborate and beautiful shell jewelry. They lived in houses built over pits excavated into the clayey soil; carved stone, bone, and shell into tools and ornaments; built huge flat-topped earthen mounds and shallow ballcourts; and cremated their dead. a Hohokam pithouse
close-up of the pithouse hearth, right inside the entryway

tiny serrated projectile points

a groundstone censor
a groundstone axe
a shell pendant
a groundstone bighorn sheep blank. See him?