Sending the Spirits Home

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 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. Numerous figures help document the variability of Hohokam practices.

Sending the Spirits Home synthesizes data from various excavations, applied archaeology, and cultural resource management projects. This study combines archaeological and ethnographic sources and provides tools for the adoption of standardized protocols needed to facilitate cross-project comparisons on which future regional syntheses can be based.