The Lower Verde Archaeological Project

Jeffrey A. Homburg; Richard Ciolek-Torello; Jeffrey Altschul; Stephanie M. Whittlesey; Steven D. Shelley; USDI Bureau of Reclamation, Phoenix Area Office

The Lower Verde Archaeological Project

Summary

The Lower Verde Archaeological Project (LVAP) was a four-year data recovery project conducted by Statistical Research, Inc. (SRI) in the lower Verde River region of central Arizona. The project was designed to mitigate any adverse effects to cultural resources from modifications to Horseshoe and Bartlett Dams. The Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Arizona Project’s Office sponsored the research program in compliance with historic preservation legislation.

The LVAP’s ultimate goal was to recover information that would contribute to a better understanding of any impacted prehistoric and historic resources in the project area, and to examine the relationship of these resources to the prehistory and history of the lower Verde River region and surrounding areas. The project employed a landscape perspective to address the settlement and use of this landscape by a diverse group of people from the prehistoric Hohokam to modern day Euroamericans and indigenous reservation communities. The research themes that guided LVAP data recovery and analysis include the following topics: 1) culture and chronologic sequence, 2) cultural affiliation 3) settlement and subsistence patterns through time, 4) domestic organization and the changing structure of larger sites within prehistoric communities, 5) Yavapai and Western Apache occupation, 6) lithic use and procurement, and 7) exchange and specialization.

The LVAP’s data recovery efforts resulted in the collection of data from approximately 53 sites in and around the project area defined by the Horseshoe and Bartlett Dams. SRI archaeologists conducted intensive site recording, surface collections, and/or excavation at 18 archaeological sites in the project area. In addition, they performed reconnaissance surveys at an additional 35 archaeological sites in the lower Verde River area. The data collected includes prehistoric and historic settlement pattern and land-use patterns, descriptions of prehistoric features, artifact samples, chronologic samples, geomorphological information and soil samples, macrobotanical samples, pollen samples, and faunal collections. In addition to these data, the LVAP also gathered and synthesized existing information on other prehistoric archaeological sites in central Arizona and on the Yavapai and Western Apache archaeological record in Arizona.

The results and synthesis of the LVAP are presented in an introduction and four report volumes entitled Vanishing River: Landscapes and Lives of the Lower Verde Valley: The Lower Verde Archaeological Project. The first document is the introduction to the report series. The first volume, entitled Descriptions of Habitation and Nonagricultural Sites, reports data from the excavation of prehistoric villages in the project area. The second volume, which is titled Agricultural, Subsistence, and Environmental Studies, describes data and analyses on the prehistoric and protohistoric agricultural practices in the area. It also addresses general land use patterns. The third volume, which is entitled Material Culture and Physical Anthropology, presents descriptions and analyses of the artifact samples and human remains recovered during the project’s data recovery. The fourth and final volume, Overview, Synthesis, and Conclusions, provides a detailed summary of the project’s research design, its efforts to integrate recovered data with the greater landscape of the lower Verde River, and its analysis of the data. This synthetic volume chronicles use of the lower Verde region across the pre-Classic Hohokam, the Classic period Hohokam, the protohistoric and historic Yavapai and Western Apache, and modern era communities.