Summer 2004 Research Updates

Available Now! The Protohistoric Pueblo World, AD 1275-1600
edited by E. Charles Adams and Andrew I. Duff (University of Arizona Press)
This book describes and interprets southwestern history immediately before and after European contact (AD 1275-1600) -- a period of great transformation for the Pueblo peoples. It summarizes 100 years of research and archaeological data as it explores the organization of village clusters. Copies available at Native Goods, the museum store.

ASM Scholars Chair Second Hohokam Symposium
A new generation of Hohokam scholars assembled at an Amerind Foundation symposium in January to revisit questions – and raise new issues - about Hohokam prehistory. The symposium, chaired by ASM archaeologists Paul and Suzanne Fish, focused on the reorganization that occurred between the Hohokam Sedentary and Classic periods (circa AD 1100) when ballcourts gave way to platform mounds and pithouse villages were transformed into large segmented towns. Final papers from the symposium go to press in spring 2005.

Progress at Marana Platform Mound

This past spring, Paul and Suzanne Fish, with James Bayman of the University of Hawai’i, continued work at the Marana Mound in a joint field school. Excavations during this fourth and final season investigated the construction of the platform mound and the activities within its compound.

Aerial view of excavations resulting from the 2004 Marana Platform Mound excavations. Photo Credit: Henry Wallace, Center for Desert Archaeology.

A massive adobe retaining wall was revealed extending more than 1.5 yards around the perimeter, giving the mound its rectangular shape. The exceptionally wide wall supported over 3,000,000 lbs. of earth filling the mound interior. A local landscaping company estimated it would require 1,500 man-days to hand-excavate and carry the earth from a barrow pit 35 yards away.

Cooking pits, probably used for communal feasts, were uncovered. A huge room with nearly 1,000 square feet of floor space was also excavated. Outside the compound, the large barrow pit furnishing earth for mound construction was subsequently converted to a reservoir, filled when water rushed down the surrounding slopes after storms. During the final events at the mound, before the site was abandoned, broken pots and deer bone were tossed into this reservoir.

The Drs. Fish and Bayman extend special thanks to the student field crews (graduate and undergraduates from five states and four countries, and students from Catalina Foothills High School), and to volunteers from the Arizona Archaeological Society’s Sunflower Chapter for their invaluable help.

Homol'ovi Research Project
In June and July, ASM archaeologists E. Charles Adams and Rich Lange, along with students and volunteers, will be excavating at the ancestral Hopi village of Chevelon, near Winslow. This is the second season of work funded by the National Science Foundation and Earthwatch Institute. Chevelon, composed of 500 masonry rooms, was occupied from about 1290-1390. ASM research will explore the extensive prehistoric burning and the relationship of Chevelon to the other Homol’ovi villages. The team will also develop a management plan for the ruin, now threatened by vandalism, flooding, and erosion.