Geological and Archaeological Investigations of Airport Wash in the Southern Tucson Basin

Summary

As part of the Santa Cruz Industrial Park Project, the City of Tucson planned to bridge and stabilize the banks of a large, deeply entrenched wash that flows into the Santa Cruz River approximately one-quarter mile south of Irvington Road on the right bank of the river. Airport Wash, as it is called, has cut deeply into the ancient sediments filling the valley at this point, exposing a long record of late Pleistocene and Holocene alluvium. Earlier examinations by archaeologists in the mid- to late 1970s had disclosed the presence of buried cultural features in the arroyo walls. Recognizing the potential importance of this geological and cultural information, the City of Tucson made investigation of Airport Wash one of the objectives of the Santa Cruz Industrial Park Project.

This report details the results of geological and archaeological investigations carried out at Airport Wash over the past two years. Initial field work began in March of 1983, with subsequent revisitations in April. Flooding caused by the passage of Tropical Storm Octave across southeastern Arizona in the first week of October, 1983, also produced significant changes in Airport Wash, exposing paleontological and archaeological specimens, so a second round of investigations occurred in mid-October. These studies were aided for part of a day by a backhoe, which created short trenches to help clarify stratigraphic relationships at critical locations in the wash and to the south of it on the Santa Cruz floodplain. In April of 1985 construction of the new Calle Santa Cruz bridge and stabilization of the banks of Airport Wash began. One additional Pleistocene paleontological specimen was seen for a brief moment, but was lost to an errant bulldozer. A backhoe trench emplaced at the locality yielded no more bones, but it did permit a more detailed view of the sediments in which the bone had occurred.

This report describes the geological and archaeological work accomplished at Airport Wash. First the alluvial units exposed along the wash and their relationships to one another are presented. Following this the cultural remains found along the wash and their stratigraphic contexts are discussed. Both parts of this brief report represent one portion of an on-going, long term research effort by the authors to develop a generalized stratigraphic and geochronologic framework for 1 the Tucson Basin, and to understand the uses to which man has put the Santa Cruz River and its environs through time. The City of Tucson-sponsored work at Airport Wash is an important step in this effort.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Desert Archaeology DAHA Resources   •
• Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology (DAHA)

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Contact(s): Desert Archaeology, Inc.

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