Ball Games, Platform Mounds, and Great Houses

Remains of the ancient ballcourt, as seen from the park picnic area viewing platform

NPS

Does the hollow, oval mound you see before you remind you of a sports stadium? Just like today's arenas, this ball court was a place where crowds of people regularly gathered more than 1,000 years ago.

Every society needs public places to gather. Here the ball court, platform mounds, and the Casa Grande all served as community centers for the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People—but at different times. Archeologists see clues that once the platform mounds to your right were built, people suddenly abandoned this ball court.

Then when the Casa Grande was built, around 100–150 years after the platform mounds, it became the center of the community.

The Old Ball Game

Players used stone balls larger than today's professional baseballs. Archeologists have identified about 200 ball courts like this in Arizona. A fine caliche plaster made the central playing fields hard and smooth.

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• Why a Ball Court

  
  

  Dr. Doug Craig, archeologist, explains why a ball court is a big deal.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS, movie outtakes, thanks to volunteer editor Jenise Cook

  Date created:

  10/14/2020

  Audio Transcript

  [Dr. Doug Craig] The presence of a ball court at Casa Grande very much attests to the preeminence of the settlement. We only find ball courts at large villages and towns. The likelihood is it was one of the last ball courts built. Also I think it signifies how the people who built the Big House and some of the monumental architecture at the site needed a connection to the past as well. The ball court system really flourished from about 800 and 1100. So it really predates a lot of what was going on at Casa Grande. But they still built it there and it is still considered important and probably a reflection of the importance of the past to those who were leading the community in the 1200’s and 1300’s . {announcer} Doug Craig, archeologist.