The Archaeology of Schoolhouse Point Mesa, Roosevelt Platform Mound Study: Report on the Schoolhouse Point Mesa Sites, Schoolhouse Management Group, Pinto Creek 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 investigated sites in the Pinto Creek Complex, a group of large and small villages that were part of extensive settlement on the south side of the Salt River. For administrative purposes only, the complex was divided into two groups of sites referred to as "management groups," one east and one west of Pinto Creek wash. Sites to the east are in the Livingston Management Group; those to the west are in the Schoolhouse Management Group.

This report is the eighth volume in the RPMS report series (the Roosevelt Monograph Series) and the sixth volume that serves primarily as a site description report. It discusses all the sites in the Schoolhouse Management Group, except for the Schoolhouse Point Mound (AZ U:8:24[ASM]/AR-0321-06-13a[USFS]). In total, the volume presents 23 site descriptions. It also presents some of the analyses and integrated conclusions that address the project research objectives that Bureau of Reclamation and Tonto National Forest archaeologists outlined in the RPMS research design (Rice 1990a).

Another publication describes the set of sites east of Pinto Creek, in the Livingston Management Group (Jacobs 1994a). A third publication reports on the Schoolhouse Point Mound, AZ U:8:24(ASM)/AR-03-12-0613a(USFS) (Lindauer 1996b), a site west of Pinto Creek that is within the Schoolhouse Management Group and the largest site on Schoolhouse Point Mesa.