S'edav Va'aki Museum exterior, Phoenix Arizona
Museum

S'edav Va'aki Museum

South Phoenix · Phoenix, Arizona

S'edav Va'aki — a name in the O'odham language meaning "place of the dugout" — preserves one of the most significant archaeological sites in the American Southwest: a large pre-Columbian Hohokam community that thrived here between roughly 700 and 1400 CE. At the center of the site stands a massive earthen platform mound, one of the largest of its kind in North America, which formed the ceremonial and administrative heart of an ancient city that may have housed thousands of people. The museum's galleries present Hohokam pottery, shell jewelry, stone tools, and interpretive materials that bring this vanished civilization into focus for contemporary visitors — a rare and profound encounter with Arizona's deep human history.