Prehistory of the St. Johns Area, East-Central Arizona: The TEP St. Johns Project

Author(s): Deborah A. Westfall

Year: 1981

Summary

The TEP (Tucson Electric Power) St. Johns Project was conducted by the Cultural Resource Management Section of the Arizona State Museum under contract to Tucson Electric Power Company and was designed to mitigate impacts to cultural resources located within a proposed railroad right-of-way corridor east of St. Johns, Arizona. The proposed corridor begins at a point 8 miles northeast of St. Johns and extends 27 miles southward to the proposed TEP SpringerviIle Generating Station north of Springerville, Arizona. The corridor crosses both State and private lands; no federal lands were involved. Archaeological investigations on State lands were conducted under Arizona State Museum Permits No. 79-15 (Phase I) and No. 79-21 (Phase ll).

A preexcavation testing phase determined that 14 of 25 recorded sites within the corridor warranted intensive study; 12 of these yielded evidence for occupation by Archaic groups, and two were small Cibola Anasazi pueblos occupied in the Pueblo II and Pueblo III periods (A.D. 1050 to 1200).

The research design stressed the need to describe and define the Archaic culture pattern represented in the St. Johns area, which had previously been the subject of only limited study. Evidence was found for an intermittent Archaic occupation spanning 5500 B.C. to A.D. 600, and the settlement pattern was found to have interesting parallels with the pattern described by Irwin-Williams (1973) for the Oshara Tradition in northwestern New Mexico. Analysis of data focused on describing variability in lithic reduction technology and attempted to ascertain if this variability could be related to temporal and cultural change.

The two pueblo sites were found to be in dividual components of a larger Cibola Anasazi pueblo settlement of 11 small pueblos (the Platt Ranch Settlement). The settlement was occupied for a relatively short period--between A.D. 1050 and 1250. An Interesting aspect of the pueblos was that all were constructed of adobe rather than rock masonry. The research strategy addressed problems of determining whether occupation was seasonal or permanent and the subsequent implications for defining Puebloan settlement systems during the Pueblo II and Pueblo III periods in the upper Little Colorado River region.

Cite this Record

Prehistory of the St. Johns Area, East-Central Arizona: The TEP St. Johns Project. Deborah A. Westfall. 1981 ( tDAR id: 428140) ; doi:10.6067/XCV8428140

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Keywords

Culture
Ancestral Puebloan • Archaic • Historic • Late Archaic • Middle Archaic

Material
Ceramic • Chipped Stone • Fauna • Fire Cracked Rock • Glass • Ground Stone • Human Remains • Macrobotanical • Metal • Pollen • Shell • Tin

Site Name
AZ Q:11:68 (ASM) • AZ Q:11:69 (ASM) • AZ Q:12:27 (ASM) • AZ Q:12:30 (ASM) • AZ Q:12:32 (ASM) • AZ Q:12:34 (ASM) • AZ Q:12:35 (ASM) • AZ Q:12:36 (ASM) • AZ Q:12:39 (ASM) • AZ Q:12:40 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:20 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:21 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:22 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:23 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:25 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:26 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:27 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:28 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:31 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:32 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:33 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:34 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:35 (ASM) • AZ Q:7:36 (ASM) • Platt Ranch

Site Type
Archaeological Feature • Artifact Concentration • Artifact Scatter • Burial Pit • Domestic Structure or Architectural Complex • Domestic Structures • Encampment • Fire Pit • Funerary and Burial Structures or Features • Hearth • Historic Trash Dump Site • Milling Bin • Milling Feature • Mound / Earthwork • Non-Domestic Structures • Packrat Midden (Neotoma sp.) • Pit • Post Hole / Post Mold • Pot Break • Quarry • Refuse Pit • Resource Extraction / Production / Transportation Structure or Features • Roasting Pit / Oven / Horno • Rock Shelter • Room Block / Compound / Pueblo • Settlements • Shade Structure / Ramada • Slab-Lined Cist • Storage Pit • Trash Scatter Show More

Investigation Types
Data Recovery / Excavation • Site Evaluation / Testing • Systematic Survey

Geographic Keywords
Apache (County) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Springerville, AZ • St. Johns, AZ

Temporal Keywords
Archaic Period • Basketmaker • Basketmaker III to Pueblo I • Historic • Pueblo II • Pueblo III

Spatial Coverage

min long: -109.455; min lat: 34.064 ; max long: -109.082; max lat: 34.509 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Salt River Project Cultural Resource Manager

Contributor(s): Walter H. Birkby; Patricia L. Crown; Suzanne K. Fish; Dale M. Fournier; Robert E. Gasser; Terrill L. Nickerson; Jerome C. Rose; Kenneth C. Rozen; Marilyn Saul; Sharon F. Urban

Principal Investigator(s): Lynn S. Teague

Project Director(s): Jon S. Czaplicki

Prepared By(s): Cultural Resource Management Division, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona

Submitted To(s): Tucson Electric Power Company

Record Identifiers

Arizona State Museum Permit(s): 79-15; 79-21

SRP Library Barcode No.(s): 00030609

File Information

  Name Size Creation Date Date Uploaded Access
1981_Westfall_PreshistoryofStJohns_OCR.pdf 232.63mb Apr 21, 2017 12:48:26 PM Confidential
This file is unredacted.

Accessing Restricted Files

At least one of the files for this resource is restricted from public view. For more information regarding access to these files, please reference the contact information below

Contact(s): Salt River Project Cultural Resource Manager