Hohokam Settlement Along the Slopes of the Picacho Mountains: The Picacho Area Sites

The third volume in the Tucson Aqueduct, Hohokam Studies Project presents the results of field investigations of sites in Reach 2 of the Tucson Aqueduct, Phase A project area. These investigations were directed towards both intensive and low level testing of a wide variety of sites in the area south of the Picacho Mountains and north of Red Rock, Arizona. Also reported are the results of on-call surveys of several areas outside of the aqueduct right-of-way. Investigations focused on portions of a large early Classic period village with a small Colonial period component, the McClellan Wash site, and a large Colonial period hamlet, the Picacho Pass site. Investigations were also carried out at the Rock Terrace site, a large dry-farming site used for the exploitation of Agave and wild plants; the Lizard Man Site, a specialized resource procurement and processing site with numerous bedrock mortars and metates; the Pecan Site, a small Colonial and early Classic period farmstead; and the Red Rock Reservoir, a pre-Classic period reservoir and resource procurement site. Small scale tests were conducted at a number of other small to moderate sized resource procurement and processing sites. These investigations revealed that the earliest occupation of the area was in the Archaic or late Pioneer period and the first evidence of major settlement was in the early Colonial period. There was a major reduction in occupation during the Sedentary period. New and larger settlements were founded in the early Classic period. Settlement peaked in the late Classic period when a large community was formed around a plat form mound northeast of the study area. Significant and early historic Piman remains were also documented at several sites. The Hohokam adaptation to this area was similar to that postulated for the Desert Branch of the Hohokam, with subsistence dependent on Chenoams, Agave, and wild plant foods. Little evidence of traditional corn agriculture was present until the early Classic period and even then it was very limited. Throughout the prehistoric occupation, the settlements appeared to be on the frontier between the Gila-Salt and Tucson basin core areas, exhibiting material culture traits from both areas. However, nonlocal resources and products were rare, indicating relatively little participation in regional interaction networks.