Workshops and Lectures
Upcoming Lectures
Ancestral O’Odham (Hohokam) Irrigation along the Lower Salt River and Broader Understanding of Ancient Irrigation
November 7th, 2025 | 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Available Online
Irrigation has been the foundation of life in the Phoenix Basin for thousands of years. The Ancestral O’Odham, commonly known as the Hohokam, developed one of the most expansive and sophisticated irrigation systems in the ancient world. Contrary to popular beliefs, the Hohokam did not disappear, but live on through O’Odham communities today. In this talk, Chris Caseldine will discuss the history of irrigation along the lower Salt River through the present day. Chris Caseldine will highlight ways that an extremely large flood and highly interconnected irrigation canals contributed to the Hohokam Classic period. Further, and he will discuss how combining understandings of Ancestral O’Odham irrigation, historic traditional irrigators, and institutions provides insights into the management of irrigation systems in other ancient agrarian societies.
Christopher Caseldine is the Curator of Collections for the Center for Archaeology and Society Repository in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU. Caseldine’s research interests focus on water management and governance among traditional irrigation societies, travel in the ancient world, and the archaeology of the Phoenix and Tonto basins in Arizona. He also focuses on NAGPRA compliance, repatriation, and curatorial management.
Updates on Research of the Leupp Isolation Center Community Accountable Archaeological Project
November 21st, 2025 | 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Available Online
In this presentation, Davina Two Bears will give an update on the Leupp Isolation Center Community Accountable Archaeological Project. Old Leupp is a site of entwined histories of both the Navajo people and Japanese Americans. Our community accountable archaeological project seeks to understand and share these histories of assimilation in federal Indian boarding schools and Japanese American incarceration on Indigenous lands by the US government in the early 20th century.
Davina Two Bears is Navajo from the community of Birdsprings, Arizona, located on the Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona. Davina is also currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU. Her research focuses on the Old Leupp Boarding School (OLBS), a Navajo historic archaeological site near the community of Leupp, Arizona. She has researched the Navajo experience at this Federal Indian Boarding School, which operated from 1909 to 1942. Although the OLBS was one of the only schools functioning on the western half of the Navajo Reservation in the early 20th century, it had never been fully documented in the literature until now. She is also researching its later use as a Japanese Isolation Center—the Leupp Isolation Center—in 1943 during World War II.