Alliance and Landscape - Perry Mesa, Arizona in the Fourteenth Century: Surface Ceramic Collections for BLM Lands in the Agua Fria National Monument

Project Description: Archaeological ceramics were systematically collected from the surface of three archaeological sites (Richinbar Ruin, Pueblo Pato, and Pueblo La Plata) within the Agua Fria National Monument. The fieldwork was part of the National Science Foundation sponsored “Alliance and Landscape: Perry Mesa, Arizona in the Fourteenth Century” project (BCS-0613201), administered by Dr. David R. Abbott and Dr. Katherine Spielmann of the Arizona State University School of Human Evolution and Social Change (see Appendix A). The
ceramics are being studied to assess the degree of interaction among Late Classic period pueblos on Perry Mesa and the Bloody Basin and Middle Verde River Valley to the east (the so-called proposed Verde Confederacy of central Arizona). In particular, the provenance-related information derived from the pottery assemblages will be utilized to assess the Verde Confederacy model proposed by Dr. David Wilcox (Wilcox et al. 2001; Wilcox and Holmlund
2007), which posits that some 14th Century pueblos in central Arizona allied themselves in a multi-community confederacy, presumably in opposition to a Hohokam polity in the Phoenix Basin. The ceramics have been sorted into ware categories based on paste color and surface treatment. Detailed analysis of the plain ware ceramics are ongoing.