River, Rain, or Ruin: Intermittent Prehistoric Land Use Along the Middle Colorado River

River, Rain, or Ruin: Intermittent Prehistoric Land Use Along the Middle Colorado River

Year: 1994

Summary

This report presents the results of archaeological data recovery and analysis for the Archer site, AZ P:4:22 (ASM), located on the north bank of the Little Colorado River, near Holbrook, Arizona. The work was conducted by Statistical Research, Inc. (SRI), to mitigate the adverse impacts of building an earthen levee on and adjacent to the site. The proposed levee is a water-control feature that is intended to protect the residents of Holbrook from periodic flooding of the Little Colorado River. During the 1992 data recovery investigations, four structures were excavated. All four structures date to the Pueblo I and early-to-middle Pueblo II period (A.D. 825-1050/1075), an era for which few excavated sites have been reported in the middle Little Colorado River valley. Although excavations were of short duration and only a sample of the cultural remains extant at the site were investigated, the data reported herein represent important additions to the description of the prehistory of the region.

The Archer site was a multiple-component Anasazi settlement that functioned as a warm season residence for small populations of farmers, who locally cultivated maize, gathered wild plants, and trapped or hunted small game, but who had contacts with cultures to the west, northwest, southwest, and east. On the basis of surface collections and test excavations conducted in 1988 by SRI, and more intensive data recovery and analysis in 1992, it appears that the locality was used intermittently over several hundred years, beginning probably sometime in the Basketmaker III period (A.D. 450/500–700/750) and ending sometime in the Pueblo III period (A.D. 1100/1150–1250/1275). Within this long time span, at least five general periods of occupation were inferred to have occurred. These occupations are associated with the following time periods: (1) Basketmaker III (represented by surface and subsurface context ceramics), (2) Pueblo I (represented by Feature 3), (3) early Pueblo II (represented by Features 5 and 6.00), (4) middle Pueblo II (represented by Feature 6.01), and (5) late Pueblo II or early Pueblo III (represented by surface and subsurface context ceramics and eroding features).

In addition to descriptive reports of excavation results and special analyses (ceramics, flaked stone, ground stone, other stone, shell, obsidian sourcing, fauna, macrobotany, pollen, radiocarbon), this report presents the results of a paleoenvironmental reconstruction of climate and streamflow variability in the middle Little Colorado River region for the A.D. 740–1370 period. In conjunction with this reconstruction, expectations concerning the locale of agricultural activities and habitation were presented that may be applied well beyond the confines of the Archer site. A preliminary test of the model was applied to a sample of absolutely dated sites in the vicinity of the middle Little Colorado River region and to the classified results of two block surveys within the region. The model was found to correctly predict 61–89 percent of sites recorded in the 61-site extra-regional sample and to shed some light on the probable adaptations and settlement patterns in the two survey areas. Expectations generated by the model were applied to the dated components of the Archer site. Given the ideal location of the Archer site (i.e., close to a variety of arable lands that could be exploited by dry and runoff farming as well as by floodplain agriculture), the model did little to further delimit occupational intervals at the locale, but it did suggest which types of cultivation systems would have been most successful during different occupations. The Pueblo I occupation likely emphasized dry and runoff farming, whereas the early Pueblo II and early Pueblo III occupations probably utilized the floodplain with regular success. Structures identified as field houses are generally associated with moist intervals when dry and runoff farming strategies would have been most successful. The single extant structure identified as being a more substantial residence is associated with a dry interval, a condition believed to be essential to successful multi-year farming of the middle Little Colorado River floodplain.

Cite this Record

River, Rain, or Ruin: Intermittent Prehistoric Land Use Along the Middle Colorado River. Carla R. Van West. Technical Series ,No. 53. Tucson, AZ: SRI Press. 1994 ( tDAR id: 425948) ; doi:10.48512/XCV8425948