2016
01
Jun
Travel Management on Our National Forests
If you’ve ever visited one of our National Forests, part of your experience within its boundaries involved travel on a road open to motorized vehicles. Over the past 30 years, as the popularity and availability of four-wheel-drive and off-highway vehicles has increased, motorized uses of our publi...
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2016
01
Jun
Protecting Places on the Land
Long-term protection of archaeological sites is an essential component of Preservation Archaeology.
Here in the American Southwest, a great number of important archaeological sites occur on private land. Nineteenth-century homesteaders settled in areas with readily available water and arable land...
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2016
01
Jun
The Heritage Southwest Database
The Heritage Southwest (HSW) database is a digital geodatabase containing information on more than 10,000 precontact (prehistoric) and historic archaeological sites in the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico. The large HSW database is divided into a number of smaller sub-databases, each developed for...
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2016
01
Jun
Zuni Origins
When the Coronado Expedition entered the Southwest in 1540, they were pursuing reports of lost cities of gold. They ended up at the seven major pueblos that we now know as Zuni. Not quite cities, and totally lacking in gold, these settlements were a source of great disappointment to the Spaniards. T...
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2016
01
Jun
Social Networks in the Late Precontact Southwest
Click here (opens as a PDF) to read the latest article on the project in the professional journal American Antiquity (Vol. 80, No. 1, 2015).
In the age of Facebook and Twitter, “social network” is a phrase heard or read almost daily—but social networks are a mainstay of the human experience...
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2016
01
Jun
Migration and Change in the Southern Southwest
Banner image courtesy of Eastern Arizona College
The centuries between A.D. 1200 and 1540 were a time of great change in the Southwest. Deteriorating environmental conditions on the Colorado Plateau in the late 1200s led people to leave the Four Corners region. This movement of northern peoples i...
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2016
27
May
Tonto National Monument
Lower Cliff Dwelling, Courtesy of the NPS
Tonto National Monument protects two cliff dwellings that provide the best-preserved architectural evidence related to what archaeologists call the Salado (opens as a PDF) cultural phenomenon.
About 40 to 60 people might have lived among the 20 room...
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2016
27
May
Tuzigoot National Monument
Banner image by Jhugg, via Wikimedia Commons
Tuzigoot (an Apache term meaning crooked water) is a multistory 110-room pueblo built by people archaeologists identify with the Sinagua archaeological culture. Residents farmed and were part of a vast trade network. Dating from the 1000s through 1400,...
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2016
27
May
Crane Petroglyph Heritage Site
Banner image by Chanel Wheeler, via Wikimedia Commons
From the web page of the Crane Petroglyph Heritage site at the website of the Coconino National Forest:
This largest-known petroglyph site in the Verde Valley is one of the best-preserved. It was acquired by the Coconino National Forest in ...
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2016
27
May
Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park
Pueblo Grande is a platform mound site of the Hohokam archaeological culture. It was donated to the City of Phoenix in 1924, and the museum opened in 1929. The museum campus has undergone renovations and additions since its inception.
"A visit today consists of a two-thirds of a mile interpretive...
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2016
27
May
Montezuma Castle National Monument
Banner image by Tomas Castelazo, via Wikimedia Commons
Well, it's not a castle, and Montezuma never lived there...but it is one of the more picturesque and well-preserved cliff dwellings in Arizona. People archaeologists associate with the Sinagua archaeological culture built the striking 20-roo...
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2016
27
May
McFarland State Historic Park
Banner image by Jerrye and Roye Klotz MD, via Wikimedia Commons
Designed by Levi Ruggles and built in 1878, the first Pinal County Courthouse in Florence constructed of locally made adobe blocks and wood that had been brought from northern Arizona by wagon. When a second courthouse was completed ...
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