Research

Contact

Kate Sarther
Communications Director
Email | (520) 882-6946, ext. 16

 

2016
01
Jun

In Search of the Coronado Trail

Launched in August 2004, the Coronado Project was an outreach and public education project that sought to determine the route of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s infamous expedition of 1540 from northern Mexico to the Pueblo of Zuni. Archaeology Southwest (then the Center for Desert Archaeology) a...
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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

San Pedro Petrofacies Project

In the late 1990s, petrologist Beth Miksa began collecting and analyzing more than 240 sand samples from areas along the entire San Pedro River Valley in Arizona and Mexico. Her innovative petrofacies research using this data has played an important part in the Archaeology Southwest’s investigatio...
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2016
01
Jun

Surveying the Southern Tucson Basin

The Hohokam of the southern Arizona desert are best known for their creation and management of extensive canal networks. In recent years we’ve come to realize that other agricultural technologies also played critical roles in sustaining Hohokam populations. My work with Archaeology Southwest inves...
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2016
01
Jun

San Pedro Ethnohistory Project

In 2001, I began my Preservation Fellowship to investigate how an array of stakeholders uses, values, and interprets the archaeological landscape in Arizona’s San Pedro valley. Bridging the disciplines of ethnology, archaeology, and ethnohistory, my research sought to understand the place of histo...
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2016
01
Jun

Safford Valley Project

This research by former Preservation Fellow Anna A. Neuzil examined archaeological data from the Safford and Aravaipa valleys in an effort to understand the social consequences of migrations to southeastern Arizona in the 13th through 15th centuries. For more on her recent publication of this resear...
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2016
01
Jun

Rock Art at South Mountain

Aaron’s manuscript titled “Religion on the Rocks: Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Transformation of the Hohokam World” (forthcoming, University of Utah Press) has won the prestigious Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Prize. The Fowlers made the award announcement on Friday, October 19, 2012, at th...
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2016
01
Jun

The Edge of Salado

What slows or halts the geographic spread of an ideology—especially an ideology that brings people together? Preservation Fellow Lewis Borck found out. His research built on previous work done by Archaeology Southwest that focused on detecting Kayenta immigrants and determining their impacts i...
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2016
01
Jun

Salmon Pueblo and the Middle San Juan River Valley

From 2001 to 2014, Archaeology Southwest’s Preservation Archaeologist Paul Reed was based at Salmon Pueblo. His long-term collaborative research project examines the reach of the cultures centered at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde into the Middle San Juan Basin. It also seeks to understand what commu...
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2016
01
Jun

Chaco Social Networks

Banner image by Ely Rareshide Doorways in Pueblo Bonito The Dynamics of Chacoan Social and Spatial Networks, A.D. 800–1200 With National Science Foundation support (BCS-1355381), we collaborated with a team of researchers (including Archaeology Southwest’s Paul Reed and ASU's Matt...
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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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