Where the Rivers Converge: Report on the Rock Island Complex

The Roosevelt Platform Mound Study (RPMS) was one of three mitigative data recovery studies that the Bureau of Reclamation funded to investigate the prehistory of the Tonto Basin in the vicinity of Theodore Roosevelt Dam. The series of investigations constituted Reclamation's program for complying with historic preservation legislation as it applied to the raising and modification of Theodore Roosevelt Dam. Reclamation contracted with the Arizona State University Office of Cultural Resource Management (OCRM) to complete the research for this investigation.

The RPMS was an eight year archaeological research project that began in April 1989. It focused on sites of the Salado period, especially on platform mounds and the residential compounds clustered around the mounds. The study examined sites within four archaeological site complexes, created only for project administrative and management purposes. It examined sites in the Rock Island Complex, located at center of the Tonto Basin, overlooking the confluence of Tonto Creek and the Salt River. Many of the prehistoric sites in this area now lie beneath the reservoir (Wood 1989; Hohmann and Kelley 1988). The RPMS conducted investigations at four sites in this complex.

This report is the fourth volume in the RPMS report series (the Roosevelt Monograph Series) and the second volume that serves primarily as a site description report. It discusses the four sites examined in the Rock Island Complex. The volume primarily describes a single large site, AZ U:8:23(ASM)/AR-03-12-06-177(USFS), and briefly reports on the three remaining sites. It also presents some of the analyses and integrated conclusions that address the project's research objectives outlined in the research design (Rice 1990a).