Theodore Roosevelt Dam: Roosevelt Rural Sites Study

The Roosevelt Rural Sites Study (RRS) was one of three data recovery mitigative studies that the Bureau of Reclamation to investigate the prehistory of the Tonto Basin in the vicinity of Theodore Roosevelt Dam. The series of investigations constituted Reclamation's program for complying with historic preservation legislation as it applied to the raising and modification of Theodore Roosevelt Dam. Reclamation contracted with Statistical Research, Inc. to conduct this study. The RRS was a two-year mitigative data designed to study small habitation, agricultural, and resource processing sites, which are located away from the main centers of prehistoric habitation in the Tonto Basin, and to contribute to an ongoing synthetic study of Tonto Basin prehistory. The specific research focus of the Roosevelt Rural Sites Study in Reclamation's overall compliance program was the evolution of prehistoric rural land-use systems in the Tonto Basin. Twenty-nine prehistoric sites grouped into six study areas located in the bajada zone surrounding the lake on lands administered by the Tonto National Forest comprise the data base for this study.

Roosevelt Rural Sites Study Volume 1 presents the investigation's research design. Volume 2 documents the results of site excavations and material culture analyses and describes a preliminary model of rural settlement types and changes in rural settlement and subsistence during the Formative period in the Tonto Basin. Volume 3 presents the results of archaeobotanica1, soil, and paleoclimatic analyses. These results are examined within an interpretive framework developed from an examination of records pertaining to ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and historic land-use in central Arizona. The volume concludes with several synthetic chapters.