Developing New Interpretations from Old Data at Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona

Author(s): Matthew Guebard

Year: 2015

Summary

This paper addresses recent archaeological work at the Castle A site (AZ 0:5:95 [ASM]), located within the Montezuma Castle National Monument boundary in Camp Verde, Arizona.Initially excavated and stabilized in 1934 by National Park Service archaeologists Martin Jackson and Sallie Pierce, the project is a historically significant event in the development of Verde Valley archaeology.Based on Jackson and Pierce’s interpretation of stratigraphic evidence, they believed a catastrophic fire destroyed the site long after abandonment, an interpretation that has persisted for over 80 years. A recent reanalysis of ceramic data coupled with archaeomagnetic dating strongly suggests this initial interpretation is incorrect. Instead, evidence points to a large and intentional fire resulting in the abandonment of the site during the last quarter of the fourteenth century.

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Cite this Record

Developing New Interpretations from Old Data at Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona. Matthew Guebard. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 396365)

Spatial Coverage

min long: -115.532; min lat: 30.676 ; max long: -102.349; max lat: 42.033 ;