Pimería Alta Missions Fauna

Summary

This project consists of zooarchaeological data from two Spanish mission sites on the land of the O'odham people located in what is now southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico. This region was referred to by the Spanish as the Pimería Alta.

Dozens of Spanish colonial missions were established in the Pimería Alta region beginning in the 1690s by Jesuit missionary Father Eusebio Kino. Missions were established within existing Native American communities. While the ostensible motivation for Spanish missionization in the Americas was religious conversion, missions were also critical to the expansion of European economic institutions in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.

Sites:

Mission Cocóspera

Excavations at Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocóspera (Mission Cocóspera) were carried out from 2002 to 2004 by archaeologists from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Mexico), lead by Arq. Júpiter Martínez. Cocóspera was named as a visita in the 1690s, in a valley that was home to a small O'odham farming community. Zooarchaeological remains from Mission Cocóspera were excavated from three loci, including the interior of the chapel ruin (Templo), a test unit located near the mission's southern wall (Locus E5), and a structure of unknown function located to the northwest of the mission church (Locus E2N). The Tempo remains consisted primarily of rodents, bats, birds, and other commensal species that were living within the ruins of the church. The zooarchaeological remains likely date to the mid to late eighteenth century.

Mission San Agustín

Mission San Agustín de Tucson was established in the 1690s among a small group of O'odham rancherías on the Santa Cruz River. Excavations at Mission San Agustín (AZ BB:13:6) were carried out in 2000 and 2001 by Desert Archaeology Inc as part of the City of Tucson's downtown revitalization project. The zooarchaeological remains from San Agustín were recovered from seven features dating between 1795 and 1820.

Personnel:

• Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman is the data creator and contact for this project. She created this tDAR project in 2012 with the Mission Cocóspera data as part of the tDAR Southwest Faunal Working Group. She also performed the zooarchaeological analysis on the Mission Cocóspera fauna.

• Andrew Webster, a graduate assistant at the University of Maryland, updated the tDAR project in 2019 by expanding the scope to include San Agustín, adding to the metadata, uploading additional resources, and editing the dataset for clarity and consistency.

• Madeline Laub, a graduate assistant at the University of Maryland, updated the tDAR project in 2019 by expanding the scope to include San Agustín, adding to the metadata, uploading additional resources, and editing the dataset for clarity and consistency.

• Vincent LaMotta performed the zooarchaeological analysis on the San Agustín fauna.

• Júpiter Martínez led the archaeological excavations at Mission Cocóspera from 2002 to 2004.

• Desert Archaeology Inc. conducted archaeological investigations at San Agustín in 2000 and 2001.

Data:

Data included on this tDAR project consist of excel files of the zooarchaeological data from Mission Cocóspera and Mission San Agustín, associated coding sheets, and scans of the original paper data entry cards where the data was originally recorded, when available.

Documents on tDAR:

• Pavao-Zuckerman 2011, "Rendering Economies" is an American Antiquity article which discusses Native animal processing for hide and tallow at both Mission Cocóspera and San Agustín.

• Pavao-Zuckerman 2010, "Animal Husbandry at Pimería Alta Missions" is a book chapter which discusses animal husbandry at both Mission Cocóspera and San Agustín.

• Martínez 2005, "Valle de Cocóspera Archaeological Project: Recent Finds" is a report on the Mission Cocóspera excavations. Maps and photos are included.