Light, Sharp, Lethal: Functional and Social Implications of Cienega Point Technology in Early Agricultural Period Southern Arizona

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Cienega phase (800 BC-AD 50) of the Early Agricultural period in southern Arizona is marked by an abrupt shift in projectile point technology from the large, heavy, side-notched San Pedro dart points of the preceding San Pedro phase (1200-800 BC) to significantly smaller, deeply corner-notched Cienega points. Investigations over the past two decades at residential sites in the floodplain of the Santa Cruz River in Tucson, Arizona have recovered numerous Cienega points that exhibit a range of design variation on the basic template that was originally defined in 1995. Recent excavations at the Clearwater site, AZ BB:13:6(ASM), indicate design differences between points recovered from pithouses and points recovered from burials—including points found within the skeletons of presumed homicide victims. These points are placed within the context of the larger regional database to explore the functional and social implications of a new technological tradition that was quickly adopted within the Santa Cruz and San Pedro drainages of southern Arizona at the beginning of the Cienega phase.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25736