Geochemical Characterization of Sediments for the Understanding of Site Occupation History in Mt. Trumbull

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The first excavation of the pithouse structure site was conducted during the summer of 2018 in Mt. Trumbull as a part of settlement pattern investigation in this area. A long trench excavation conducted at the center of a depression observed in this site revealed a large pithouse floor in the limestone bedrock. The profile of this trench shows at least two or three possible occupations above the limestone bedrock layer. The interpretation of the stratigraphy, however, is somewhat challenging, partially due to the small amount of artifacts and ambiguous texture difference. Thus, in this paper, we address the questions about the history of the site use. Specifically, we seek to investigate which stratigraphic level is a human related level (e.g., living floor). Geochemical characterization of soil has successfully been applied to infer human activity elsewhere (e.g, Mesoamerica). By analyzing soil samples for phosphorus content using pXRF spectrometry, the stratigraphy of the excavation is better contextualized and the distinction between human related fill and natural fill in the archaeological feature becomes clearer. In this paper, we are presenting the results of pXRF analysis of sediments from various depth and locations within this trench.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23809