Developing Perspectives on Tonto Basin Prehistory

This volume is the second in the Roosevelt Monograph Series and is based on papers presented by members of the research team of the Roosevelt Platform Mound Study at a symposium held at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in New Orleans in the spring of 1991. Three additional chapters have been added based on papers presented elsewhere during that year. We are grateful to the authors for their contributions and their early insights on the data recovered in the early phases of the project. We have chosen to present our ideas and trial formulation even before the excavations are complete, not because we are certain of their validity, but because we believe this is the way to advance our own thinking and to stimulate responses from others.

The Roosevelt Platform Mound Study is funded by the US. Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Interior, and the editors wish to acknowledge the important contributions that have been made to an understanding of Arizona prehistory because of the long legacy of Reclamation funded projects. We also appreciate the role the Tonto National Forest, as the land management agency for our study area, has played in furthering this research. Tom Lincoln (BOR), Kathy Pedrick (BOR) and Scott Wood (Tonto NF) have been instrumental in establishing the goals and structure of the overall program for archaeological research that was necessitated by plans for the raising of the Theodore Roosevelt Dam. We acknowledge the importance of the directions they have set for us, and appreciate the chance to work with them.