With National Science Foundation support, Dr. David Abbott and Dr. Katherine Spielmann will lead a multi-disciplinary team from Arizona State University, to conduct a two-year archaeological research project in central Arizona. Compelling evidence for endemic warfare during the late prehistoric times has been documented in many areas of the American Southwest, and some models postulate hostilities at a macro-regional level. Among them is the Verde Confederacy, which has been described as a highly coordinated alliance that encompassed 10,000-13,000 people at 135 settlements in the middle Verde River valley, Bloody Basin, and Perry Mesa during the 14th century. This confederacy is believed to have been aligned for conflict against a larger, irrigation-based Hohokam polity in the Phoenix basin to the south. Did marco-regional warfare perpetrated by large-scale alliances truly exist during the 1300s in central Arizona? If it did, how was the Verde Confederacy organized and what was the web of relations within it? If it did not, at what scale(s) did alliances develop in the increasing hostile landscape of the late prehistoric period?
To address these questions, a three-component strategy has been formulated, using ceramic, architectural, and paleoclimatic data. By tracing ceramic transactions, this project investigates the local, regional, and macro-regional networks of social interaction among members of the proposed Verde Confederacy, and between them and their postulated Hohokam enemies. The Verde Confederacy model predicts numerous social and economic ties and the transfer of goods among the confederacy members. A ceramic compositional study, aided by petrographic thin section analysis and chemical assays with an electron microprobe, categorizes the pottery from different portions of the confederacy according to provenance, providing the means to trace the movement of pots across central Arizona.
In addition, architectural and paleoclimatic evidence is used to evaluate the extent to which the local and regional settlement patterns were dictated by a defensive strategy implemented by a large-scale confederacy. According to the Verde Confederacy model, numerous settlements were newly established in the late 1200s on Perry Mesa to guard the alliance's western flank. This project determines if settlements were constructed as a unit to accommodate a population moving en masse to take up defensive positions. It also considers an alternative model for the Perry Mesa occupation by examining paleoclimatic indicators to determine if Perry Mesa was more conducive to farming at that time, as compared to deteriorating conditions in an abandoned foothills zone immediately to the south.
The intellectual merit rests on addressing a key question in Southwest archaeology: What was the maximum scale at which polities organized themselves, and what were the forces and constraints that drove those developments? The broader impacts come from: 1) enhanced interaction with the Hopi and Yavapai peoples, whose ancestral territories included Perry Mesa and its immediate surroundings; 2) the integration of education and research that includes both undergraduate and graduate students; and 3) knowledge exchange with BLM and Tonto National Forest land managers who manage and interpret for the public the history and nature of the prehistoric occupation on Perry Mesa.
