Stratigraphy and Chronology at Las Capas, an Early Agricultural Period Site in the Tucson Basin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper discusses the stratigraphic chronology for the Las Capas site in the Tucson Basin, southern Arizona. Las Capas was inhabited by early farmers during the Late Archaic/Early Agricultural period (EAP), which dates from about 2100 cal BC to cal AD 50. Maize and canal irrigation were introduced during this interval. Settlement shifted from mobile hunting and foraging lifeways to a more place-focused mixed farming-foraging economy. Extensive excavations at Las Capas documented occupations within five distinct floodplain strata. Cultural features included dozens of pithouses, thousands of pits, human and canine inhumations, and canal-irrigated field systems. OxCal is used to model the site’s chronology based on the stratigraphy, which is dated by 78 AMS radiocarbon and three OSL ages. The model divides EAP phases into relatively short intervals that provide the opportunity to study change through time within otherwise monolithic culture-historical phases 400 or more years in duration. Over two dozen other EAP sites have been excavated in the Tucson Basin, and more than 200 radiocarbon samples analyzed. The work at Las Capas and the evaluation of data from other sites indicate it is possible to model contemporaneity of EAP settlements in the Tucson Basin and refine the regional chronology in general.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32245