The name Sinagua was coined in 1939 by archaeologist Harold S. Colton, founder of the Museum of Northern Arizona, from the Spanish words sin meaning "without" and agua meaning … See more

Early Sinagua sites consist mostly of large pit houses, similar to the ones built by the Hohokam people of southern Arizona, and wooden buildings. Later structures more closely resemble the Pueblo architecture practiced by other contemporaneous cultural groups See more

Sinagua peoples left the Verde Valley by the early 15th century. Like other pre-Columbian cultures in the southwest, the Sinagua apparently abandoned their permanent settlements around this time, though the precise reasons for such a large-scale … See more

Colton also distinguished between two different Sinagua cultures. The Northern Sinagua were loosely centered in the highlands around … See more

The Sinagua economy was based on a combination of hunter-gatherer foraging and subsistence agriculture. They hunted a variety of game from antelope, bear, rabbit, to turtles and ducks.
They used amaranth, ricegrass, cactus fruit, See more

Known as Alameda Brown Ware, their plain pottery was built using the paddle-and-anvil method. Their clay was grey or brown, See more

Several contemporary Hopi clans trace their ancestry to immigrants from the Sinagua culture, who they believe left the Verde Valley for religious reasons. Pima, Tohono O'odham, Yavapai, and Zuni also potentially have cultural, linguistic, and historical … See more