Archaeology of the Ak Chin Indian Community West Side Farms Project: The Land and the People

This volume presents an overview of the project area through environmental, geomorpological, and historical studies. The chapters contained herein represent only one aspect of the Ak-Chin Archaeological Project, which involved data recovery at 31 prehistoric, protohistoric, and historic sites. Four other volumes in the series provide the research design, reports on the sites studied, interpretations of the material culture and human remains from the sites, subsistence information derived from these sites, and a synthesis and interpretation of the various data. This volume contains seven chapters that set the stage for the remaining volumes. It includes an introduction, an assessment of the modern and historic physical environment in the project area, an overview of floodwater farming, a historical examination of Ak-Chin area from the perspective of Spanish Colonial records, an examination of the area based on archaeological and historical records, and a history of government policy and administration of the Ak-Chin area.