Shelltown and the Hind Site: A Study of Two Hohokam Craftsman Communities in Southwestern Arizona, Volume 2: Appendices

Summary

Shelltown and The Hind Site were excavated as part of the construction of the Santa Rosa Canal, a large distribution aqueduct intended to bring water to several irrigation districts and two American Indian communities in central Arizona, and also as part of the fabrication of the delivery canals for the Maricopa-Stanfield Irrigation and Drainage District, which is one of those recipient districts. The Santa Rosa Canal originates at the Tucson A Division of the main CAP aqueduct a little southeast of Picacho Reservoir in Pinal County, Arizona. At its origin point, the Santa Rosa Canal is almost as large as the main aqueduct that feeds it. From there, the canal runs westwards, more or less, until it reaches Santa Rosa Wash and turns northwest, extending to Vekol Wash southwest of the small unincorporated community of Maricopa, Arizona. The final length of the canal traverses due north, then east to end at the southwest comer of the Ak Chin Indian Community, which is the final user of CAP water served by the Santa Rosa Canal. Loci 1, 2, and 3 of Shelltown and all of the excavated area at The Hind Site were struck by the Santa Rosa Canal; Locus 4 at Shelltown was impacted by a smaller distribution canal of the Maricopa-Stanfield Irrigation District that connects with the Santa Rosa Canal northwest of the main site area.

Test excavations and data recovery at Shelltown and The Hind Site were conducted from the spring of 1985 through to the spring of 1986. Intensive data recovery at The Hind Site had to endure the ferocious summer heat in 1985; the excavations at Shelltown were conducted comfortably over the following winter. The Bureau of Reclamation designated the investigations in Loci 1, 2, and 3, of Shelltown and all of The Hind Site as Task 23; the work in Locus 4 at Shelltown, impacted by the Maricopa-Stanfield Irrigation and Drainage District canal, was Task 33. Poor weather conditions resulted in the loss of only a few days, but caused some significant losses of data at both sites. An unusually severe summer "monsoon" deluge effectively destroyed The Hind Site in the final days of our work, before some critical information on newly uncovered structures could be recorded. A similarly calamitous downpour hit Shelltown just as data recovery operations were commencing, washing out the walls of several exploratory trenches and obliterating numerous features exposed within them. Data was also lost to vandals during the early stages of investigations at Shelltown, to the extent that we were forced to hire a security guard for the site until completion of the dig. The vandalism losses consisted of several shell caches and a reconstructible vessel exposed in the walls of exploratory trenches.

This is Volume 2 of 2. Composed of the appendices, Volume 2 discusses artifact analysis and physical site descriptions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Salt River Project Digital Library   •
• National Archeological Database (NADB)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Salt River Project Cultural Resource Manager

Contributor(s): James Burton; Pablo Lopez; Vera Morgan; M. Steven Shackley; James Copus; Richard J. Martynec; Shari T. Prince; Louise M. Senior

Sponsor(s): U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation

Prepared By(s): Northland Research, Inc.

Record Identifiers

NADB document id number(s): 2203317; 2203317

SRP Library Barcode No.(s): 00090590

NADB citation id number(s): 000000242449; 000000167421

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