Historic Pima Occupation and Land Use on the Mesa Terrace of the Salt River Valley, Arizona: Introduction to the Beeline Highway Archaeological Project

Summary

The Salt River Project (SRP) and Arizona Public Service Company (APS) propose to construct three transmission lines along a portion of the Beeline Highway on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC). SRP proposed to build a new line which connects the Pinnacle Peak, Brandow, and Papago Buttes substations. At the same time, APS proposed to realign two existing transmission lines and move them out of the Salt River channel and onto the north terrace above the river. Archaeological Consulting Services Ltd. (ACS) was contracted to perform cultural resource investigations for both the SRP and APS portions of the project (Effland 1985a; Effland and Green 1984). A total of 13 identified sites were evaluated as significant and, as such, potentially eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (Effland and Green 1984). The recommendations of the studies were that both SRP and APS should work to minimize adverse effects by carefully designing pole and access locations and to employ a professional archaeological contractor to prepare and implement a data recovery program to negate any adverse effects of the proposed development project.

A research design for data recovery was prepared by ACS (Effland 1985b), and accepted by SRP, APS, representatives of the SRPMIC, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). The research design identified seven prehistoric Hohokam sites and one historic Pima site as unavoidable under the development plans for the proposed transmission line realignment (Table 1). All of the sites identified within the project area had previously been recorded by Arizona State University during a 1971 cultural resource inventory of the SRPMIC (Arizona State University archaeological site records, Department of Anthropology; Laughlin 1972). The seven previously recorded prehistoric Hohokam sites were all characterized as limited activity sites consisting of sherd and lithic scatters, pot busts, or rock-cluster features (Effland 1985b; Laughlin 1972). The historic Pima site consists of the burned remains of a single adobe structure and associated artifact scatter dating to post A.D. 1860 (Laughlin 1972). Field methodology for data recovery was to include not only the previously recorded sites within the project area, but also the ephemeral artifact scatter which was observed to be nearly continuous between the identified sites (Effland 1985b).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Salt River Project Digital Library

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Salt River Project Cultural Resource Manager

Field Director(s): Scott L. Fedick

Project Director(s): Richard Effland

Repository(s): Salt River Project, Tempe, AZ

Prepared By(s): Archaeological Consulting Services, Ltd.

Submitted To(s): Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community; Arizona Public Service Company; Salt River Project

Record Identifiers

Salt River Project Library Call No.(s): E78.B44F43 1987

Salt River Project Library Barcode No.(s): 00091028

ACS Cultural Resource Report No.(s): 57

File Information