In the absence of an oral
tradition, archeologists aren’t sure what this spiral meant to the Hohokam
artist who carved it at Painted Reserve, near Gila Bend, Arizona. The
Hohokam were a highly developed people who occupied modern-day Arizona, New
Mexico and northern Mexico. They built multi-story mud brick dwellings and
grew a variety of crops, irrigated with water channeled from nearby rivers.
Then 1200 years ago, they moved on, leaving no record of where they went,
though they’re believed to be the ancestors of the Pima and Tohono O’odham
of southern Arizona, for whom the spiral represents eternity or emergence.
