• 

  Hopi History in Stone: The Tutuveni Petroglyph Site [No. 200]

  Bernardini, Wesley (Arizona State Museum, The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 2009)
• 

  Relation of “Bonito” Paleo-channels and Base-level Variations to Anasazi Occupation, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico [No. 194]

  Force, Eric R.; Vivian, R. Gwinn; Windes, Thomas C.; Dean, Jeffrey S.; Funkhauser, Gary (Arizona State Museum, The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 2002)

  Late Holocene deposits of Chaco Canyon, rather well known from studies beginning in the 1800s, include a filled prehistoric arroyo that we call the Bonito channel. Extensive dating via detrital ceramics, confirmed by in situ archaeological sites, shows the channel filled from about A.D. 1025 to 1090, earlier than some previous authors thought. Channel cutting may have begun as early as A.D. 900. The development of both the Bonito and modern arroyos is due to the anomalous position of the valley floor in Chaco Canyon, which is perched 4-5 m above and separated from the rest of its drainage network by an eolian dune. This dune apparently formed an effective dam at some times (when valley-floor units formed) but was breached at others (when channels formed). Thus base-level change drove stratigraphic evolution. The Bonito channel system is dendritic, cut in the older Chaco and Gallo units that define the valley floor surface, and is filled to the valley-floor level with little indurated sand and lesser gravel. A single soil-flood plain unit, not as strongly developed as the multiple soils on older units, is present on Bonito channel fill. The timing of base-level change, governed by eolian vs. fluvial energy, is uncertain but seems consistent with dendroclimatic, cultural, and stratigraphic chronologies of Chaco Canyon (new local dendroclimatic data are presented herein). Probably because of the unusual, rather mechanical nature of controls there, the alluvial chronology of Chaco Canyon does not correlate well with others of the region. Anasazi activity seems to have been tuned to changes in the Bonito channel with regard to construction of pueblos, roads, and water control features. Relations between fluvial and cultural features were especially intricate during channel filling, about A.D. 1025-1090, a period of great Chacoan influence and complexity. The extraordinary Chacoan water-control features may have been initiated in response to the Bonito channel system, and at least three Chacoan great houses were built entirely or in part on filled Bonito channels.
• 

  Living on the Edge of the Rim: Excavations and Analysis of the Silver Creek Archaeological Research Project 1993-1998 [No. 192 Vol. 2]

  Dean, Jeffrey S.; Graves, William M. III; Horner, Jennifer Zack; Huckell, Lisa W.; Kaldahl, Eric J.; Newcomb, Joanne M.; Perry, Elizabeth M.; Riggs, Charles R.; Stinson, Susan L.; Triadan, Daniela; et al. (Arizona State Museum, The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1999)
• 

  Holocene Depositional History and Anasazi Occupation in McElmo Canyon, Southwestern Colorado [No. 188]

  Force, Eric; Howell, Wayne (Arizona State Museum, The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1997)

  McElmo Canyon in southwestern Colorado, which drains the Montezuma basin into the San Juan River, contains excellent exposures of Holocene sequences that underlie a broad valley-bottom terrace system. These exposures are the vehicle for this study of the stratigraphy and geometry of fluvial deposits and their contained archaeological remains. Anasazi sites in alluvium range from Basketmaker III to Pueblo III in age, thus providing age guides for the period AD. 500-1300. Fluvial deposits include channel, floodplain, and tributary alluvial fan facies. During times when (and at locales where) the system aggraded, these facies are interbedded and gradational in a way that suggests a braided channel, in contrast to degrading episodes that suggest a meandering channel. Local deposition rate was as great as about three meters in 100 years where distal fan deposits on the northern side of the valley are interbedded with main-channel floodplain deposits. Two main depositional packages are present, separated by an unconformity that mostly formed during the Pueblo I period. The age of this high relief unconformity is apparently diachronous, and the overlying package is certainly diachronous, both suggesting upstream migration of about five kilometers in 200 years. Our stratigraphic record of migrating loci of entrenchment and aggradation corresponds to studies of modern drainages, in which such changes are internal drainage adjustments. However, the broader time intervals of dominant erosion versus deposition are similar to alluvial chronologies elsewhere in the region and are thought to be controlled by climate change. An intricate feedback system apparently operated between sedimentary and geomorphic events on one hand, and Anasazi agriculture and habitation on the other. Agricultural water-control features show the importance of actively aggrading toes of northside fans in Anasazi agriculture. Habitation, situated on adjacent quasi-stable landforms, closely tracked loci of aggradation as these loci migrated. No habitation adjacent to valley segments suffering coeval entrenchment was found. The relation of migrating entrenchment loci and observed Anasazi habitation patterns suggest that the deleterious effects of entrenchment on Anasazi floodland agriculture probably resulted only in migration to nearby loci of deposition. The floodland component of Anasazi agriculture in this region may explain some Anasazi migration patterns that are otherwise anomalous. Adjacent floodlands and uplands, both in zones favorable for agriculture, may be required for successful habitation at certain times. The locations of the zones favorable for each agricultural strategy may vary through time somewhat independently of one another.
• 

  The Hardy Site at Fort Lowell Park, Tucson, Arizona [No. 175 Revised Edition]

  Gregonis, Linda M.; Reinhard, Karl J.; Hildreth, Mary E. (Arizona State Museum, The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 2011)

  A small portion of the Hardy site, a large, pre-Classic Hohokam village, was excavated by University of Arizona students and other volunteers between 1976 and 1978. The portion of the site that was excavated revealed houses and associated features dating from the Sweetwater or Snaketown phase through the Late Rincon subphase. Information retrieved from the site was used to examine occupation space use and reuse through time, to better define the Canada del Oro phase, and to propose the inclusion of the Cortaro phase (now subsumed within the Late Rincon subphase) in the Tucson Basin Hohokam cultural sequence.

View more