Vanishing River Volume 4: Chapter 18: Research Design Revisited: Processual Issues in the Prehistory of the Lower Verde Valley

Chapter 18 provides a summary of the LVAP’s research themes and offers an overview of the research results. Ciolek-Torello synthesizes the chronology and cultural sequence of the lower Verde Valley. He places this sequence and its cultural developments in the context of other cultural sequences in central and southern Arizona. Whittlesey then summarizes the argument for an indigenous cultural tradition in the Transition Zone of central Arizona, one with roots in Mogollon prehistory and with close affiliations to the Sinagua tradition. Furthermore, she characterizes the zone as a joint use area, with individual places having unique histories that resulted from population movement. Next, Ciolek-Torello discusses the three primary adapative strategies that this prehistoric tradition employed in their occupation of this landscape: a foraging-farming strategy, a ráncheria-type village-farming strategy, and a nucleated puebloan-type village-framing strategy. He then moves to a discussion of processual research themes on social organization and adaptive strategies. He considers agricultural complexity, socio-cultural complexity, and the impact of adaptive mobility on a sequential hierarchical social structure. Ciolek-Torello concludes with an overview of this research’s implications for the interpretation of central Arizona prehistory and history.