Excavations in the Santa Cruz River Floodplain: The Early Agricultural Component at Los Pozos

Excavations in the Santa Cruz floodplain in 1995 provided important new data concerning the latter centuries of the Early Agricultural period (ca. 1500 B.C.-A.D. 150) in southern Arizona. This volume describes investigations at Los Pozos, an extensive distribution of pit structures and associated extramural features occupied in the interval immediately preceding the arrival of pottery in the southern Southwest. The materials reported here provide important new perspectives on the lifeways of these preceramic foragers-farmers.

Forty-two pit structures and numerous extramural features were excavated at the site, the latter including several remarkable wells for which the site is named. Nineteen AMS radiocarbon determinations firmly bracket the occupation between 300 B.C. and A.D. 100.

The volume includes detailed analyses of the extensive material culture assemblages recovered from the site–including flaked stone, ground stone, bone tools, and rare incipient plain ware ceramics. Subsistence practices are revealed through analyses of hundreds of flotation samples, as well as examination of the abundant and varied faunal assemblage. The current chronology for the Early Agricultural period is evaluated and revised in light of the new data from Los Pozos, and a summary chapter examines trend and variation during the period.