The quantity and quality of research on ancestral O'Odham (Hohokam) platform mounds and their associated communities conducted in the past 50 years are nothing short of remarkable. Vapaki synthesizes this research, addresses it, and reconsiders it through the lens of current anthropological thought in essays by many of the archaeologists who conducted the original fieldwork. As an archaeologist who lived and worked in the region in question, and who was directly or peripherally involved in some of the projects discussed, it is gratifying to see such a thorough and readable book. Archaeologists and anthropologists will find much of interest because the historical narrative being constructed has much to say about pathways that humankind takes and the consequences ensuing therefrom.
The range covered in the 15 chapters is impressive. Chris Loendorf and Barnaby V. Lewis's preface makes the important point that the oral histories of the O'Odham have been misconstrued and that the defeat of the Vapaki (O'Odham for platform mound) rulers was not by an invading people: instead, it was the O'Odham who conquered the rulers. In Chapter 2, Mark D. Elson updates his work on ethnographic analogies for platform mounds, altering his former perspective to acknowledge variability in residency at the mound locations. Suzanne K. Fish and Paul R. Fish offer in Chapter 3 a long-overdue discussion of west Mexican connections to the Hohokam Classic period, the portion of the sequence when platform mounds spread across the region. They propose that there were stronger connections to west Mexico in the Classic period than earlier in the sequence, offering a convincing argument in support of this position based on linguistic connections, textile and weaving styles and technology, and the architectural precedence in west Mexico of platform mounds and compound architecture.
M. Kyle Woodson, Loendorf, and Brian Medchill in Chapter 9 provide a wonderful synopsis of the extensive research conducted within the Gila River Indian Community; they then draw from that research and data from other regions to discuss demographic trends and movement, canal system management and changes, and socioeconomic roles played by platform mounds and the people associated with them. Despite the central role that their study area played in the precontact era, much of the information they provide is not widely available outside the gray literature, making their contribution an invaluable resource. This chapter is one of the best in the volume.
One of the themes in Vapaki is the recognition that O'Odham oral history accounts are useful to archaeological reconstructions of the past. Linda Morgan, Lewis, and Loendorf in Chapter 5 bring this point home and do a good job of showing what has been missed by not drawing on such accounts. Another theme revolves around the use of legacy data. The era of contract archaeology has produced an enormous body of curated artifacts and data pertaining to platform mounds. David E. Doyel in Chapter 6, with regard to Gatlin, and Todd W. Bostwick, Douglas R. Mitchell, Laurene Montero, and Christian E. Downum in Chapter 10, dealing with Pueblo Grande, are prime examples. Doyel draws from published and unpublished data on the excavation of the Gatlin platform mound, compiling unpublished data from several archaeologists and an avocational archaeologist to generate a site map and to pull together detailed information on other portions of the settlement. Bostwick and his colleagues have published several books on the archival data they accumulated on the Pueblo Grande platform mound/compound, and they do a nice job summarizing it here.
Another theme, reflected in Richard Ciolek-Torello's chapter, is that there was significant diversity in the form and function of platform mounds: thus, one cannot assume that they all were based on the same religious system or ideology. A somewhat related theme pertains to migration and the influence of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century population movements on the use and construction of platform mounds. Ciolek-Torello, Katherine A. Dungan, Arleyn W. Simon and Owen Lindauer, Borck and Jeffery J. Clark, and Glen E. Rice and Loendorf all see the influx of Kayenta migrants into the region as playing important roles, ranging from influencing the architectural forms of mounds and their associated compounds to potentially playing a role in the motivation for their construction in the first place to producing the trademark pottery of the Salado–Roosevelt Red Ware.
One of the most interesting and provocative contributions is Borck and Clark's chapter on anarchic social movements. These authors have long promoted the idea that Salado was an anarchic social movement that contested the social and political formations represented by the platform mounds. Their discussion of societal crisis hinge points and the choices societies make to move toward increased hierarchy (when people are looking for strong leadership) or to support decentralized networks and consensual decision-making (as the O'Odham did) is worth reading by anyone living in today's world.
Rice, Christopher N. Watkins, Erica O'Neil, and Erik Steinbach offer in Chapter 14 a new theoretical perspective on the rise of platform mounds in the ancestral O'Odham region: costly signaling theory. They suggest that platform mounds were built as costly signaling devices in a time of intense competition for scarce resources: the mounds demonstrated competitive capability and promoted the formation of cooperative networks. They ceased to be built and used when population decreased and competition was no longer an issue.
In the concluding chapter Rice and Loendorf address what has long been a concern of mine: Why does the archaeological evidence point to platform mound community leadership shared among multiple leaders and groups, and yet the oral histories describe individual powerful leaders, going so far as to name those at particular platform mound sites? Rice and Loendorf suggest that there was only a very brief period before the termination of the mound communities during which leadership was co-opted by individuals; thus, there was not enough time for these leaders to create an archaeological signature at most sites.
Vapaki is a well-edited, data-rich book that should be considered a must-read for Southwest archaeologists and for any researchers and readers interested in the development of sociopolitical complexity and what leads a society to reject hierarchy.
