Multidisciplinary Studies of Anthropogenic Change, Subsistence, Social Organization, Regional Interaction, and Technology at the Las Capas Site, BC 1200-400, Southern Arizona

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Recent research at the Las Capas site (AZ AA:12:111) near Tucson, Arizona, has resulted in discoveries about Early Agricultural Period (B.C.1250-A.D.50) foraging, horticulture, and hunting in southern Arizona, for which there exists no known ethnographic analog. To date, 3,153 excavated features have yielded thousands of analyzed flotation, pollen, and soil samples, tens of thousands of analyzed osteological specimens, and hundreds of thousands of artifacts. The combined effort makes Las Capas arguably the most intensively studied archaeological site in the United States. This publically-funded project encompassed a broad range of analytical efforts. This poster session presents the findings of specialists from the leading edge of the fields of AMS-dating, archaeozoosteology, ceramic analysis, lithic analysis, ground stone analysis, human archaeoosteology, marine shell analysis, mortuary analysis, ostrocode analysis, paleoethnobotany, palynology, pedology, and stratigraphic geochronology. The occupants of Las Capas were among the earliest practitioners of maize horticulture in the United States, and combined gardening and irrigation with a system of extensive foraging, logistical and residential mobility, and long distance travel or exchange.