Research Issues in the Prehistory of Central Arizona: The Central Arizona Water Control Study, Volume 1

Summary

The Central Arizona Water Control Study provided the occasion to reassess the current state of our knowledge of the prehistory of the greater Salt-Gila Basin. There are two reasons for conducting this review. The first is to provide a baseline review of the current research questions, problems, and unknowns in our understanding of the prehistory of the area. The second purpose is to stimulate, through the examination of old ideas, the development of new views on the prehistory of this area. In this way contract archaeology serves both as the crucible for new ideas as well as the means for providing the data bases by which these new ideas are examined.

This overview discusses a series of research topics that need to be addressed in the research of south-central Arizona. The review begins with a consideration of the Archaic (preceramic) period and reviews a series of important issues. These include (1) the role of environmental fluctuations in Archaic adaptive shifts, (2) the accurate identification of Archaic "structural poses" within and between time intervals, (3) problems with Archaic periodization schemes, (4) the role of population growth in Archaic adaptive shifts, and (5) evidence for social differentiation during the Archaic in the Southwest.

Such an approach is not without problems. Unlike many other sciences, where any one phenomenon has multiple indicators and may be indirectly measured in a number of ways, the present state of archaeology is such that relatively few indicators, or means of measuring, multiple phenomena are available. The cumulative effect is that a single indicator may simultaneously refer to more than one phenomena. Because of the topical organization of this presentation, with the attendant use of some of the same indicators to address different topics, there will be certain redundancies in the data that will be presented in each topical discussion.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Salt River Project Digital Library

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Daniel Garcia

Contributor(s): Neal Ackerly; Dorothy M. Goddard; Paul R. Fish; Suzanne K. Fish; Julie C. Francis; Roberta A. Jewett; Martin McAllister; Glen E. Rice; J. Scott Wood; Brent L. Woodward

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