From Upper to Lower Santan: Platform Mound Community Organization within the Santan Canal System in the Middle Gila River Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent and extensive Data Recovery investigations have been completed at sites along the prehistoric Santan Canal system in the Middle Gila River Valley, including both the Upper Santan and Lower Santan Platform mound communities. This work is being conducted by the Gila River Indian Community Cultural Resource Management Program as part of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project. These investigations have substantially improved our understanding of settlement organization within the Santan area, including the temporal and spatial distribution of habitation areas. In contrast with nearby area such as the Tonto Basin, the late Classic inhabitants in the Santan area did not densely aggregate and instead remained in comparatively small (4 to 5 room) and dispersed settlements. While numerous Preclassic rooms are present in the immediate proximity of the two mound precincts, the nearest late Classic habitation areas are more than 0.5 kilometer away from either mound, and most settlement locations are 1 to 3 kilometers distant. This presentation explores the implications of this patterning, as well as other regional differences within the Hohokam area.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23434