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Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) proposed widening Interstate 10 (I-10) in northern Pima County, Arizona. Desert Archaeology, Inc., was contracted to mitigate the potential effects construction would have on significant cultural resources. A phased data recovery program was completed that addressed construction impacts at five archaeological sites along the l-10 corridor. Phase 1, exploratory trenching, tested for subsurface deposits at AZ AA:12:51 (ASM), AA:12:252 (ASM), AZ AA:12:486 (ASM), and AZ AA:12:256 (ASM). Cultural deposits were not identified in the project area at AA:12:486 or AA:12:256, and these two sites were excluded from further work. Phase 2 investigations, consisting of horizontal mechanical stripping and hand-excavation, mitigated the remaining two sites and revealed a canal complex recorded as AZ AA:12:961 (ASM). Results as a whole for the project area indicate a sequence of small, dispersed activity locales, which were occupied intermittently over an exceedingly long duration of time. AA:12:252 included a small, limited-activity area consisting of clustered pits that date from the Agua Caliente phase to the Tortolita phase. Components at AA:12:51 are not dissimilar, and indicate occupations perhaps as early as the unnamed phase, with reoccupations during the San Pedro, Tortolita and Early Rincon phases. Environmental and subsistence data, artifacts, and features were generally infrequent at the investigated sites, making interpretations tenuous. The most significant finding was a San Pedro phase irrigated field system and associated canals, AA:12:961, at AA:12:51. Multiple crops were grown during a limited interval, and the structure of the field demonstrates a high degree of irrigation competency.

The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), through its contractor, HDR Engineering, Inc., requested that Desert Archaeology, Inc., conduct Phase 1 and Phase 2 archaeological data recovery investigations at seven prehistoric sites along U.S. 191, approximately 1 mile west of the Navajo community of Wide Ruins, Apache County, Arizona (Elson and Herr 2005; Herr 2006b). The investigations were conducted in the Area of Potential Effects (APE) for construction of a northbound passing lane and turn lanes at the future intersection of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Road N9345. Between 19 June and 6 July 2006, Phase 1 exploratory investigations were conducted at six sites; a seventh site was examined because human bone had been reported eroding from the road-cut (Benallie 1993). After these intial investigations, Phase 2 data recovery investigations were recommended for four sites: Red Ant, AZ-P-36-81 (NN)/ AZ K:10:28 (ASM); Black Ant, AZ-P-36-70 (NN)/AZ K:10:8 (ASM); Kanine, AZ-P-36-122 (NN)/ AZ K:10:9 (ASM); and Kin Ten Ten, AZ-P-36-125 (NN)/AZ K:10:10 (ASM). The research potential of AZ-P-36-115 (NN)/AZ K:10:12 (ASM) and AZ-P-36-116 (NN)/AZ K:10:13 (ASM) within the APE was exhausted by the exploratory investigations and no further work was conducted at those sites. No human bone was identified in the road-cut at AZ-P- 36-66 (NN)/K:10:11 (ASM), so no work was conducted there. After an on-site review of the Phase 1 work held on 5 July 2006, with Mark Brodbeck (HDR Engineering), William Doelle (Desert Archaeology), Sarah Herr (Desert Archaeology), Ron Maldonado (NNHPD), and David Zimmerman (ADOT), Desert Archaeology's recommendations for Phase 2 data recovery were reviewed and approved. The second phase of work was conducted between 10 July and 24 August 2006. A final tour for agency personnel was held on 14 August 2006. A total of 295 crew and 143 supervisor field person-days were spent on data recovery excavations. In this final report, the results of fieldwork and the analyses of artifacts and samples from the six sites investigated during the U.S. 191 Wide Ruins Archaeological project are presented. The current project provides a starting point from which to examine how this place has been used for centuries. Many layers of history are evoked by the landscape, from the shifting sand dunes and waterways measured in geologic time, the life history of houses and settlements explored in archaeological time, and the timeless history of the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni groups who value and steward the land.

The mountainous zone below the Mogollon Rim in central Arizona was home to Apache in the pre-Reservation period (pre-A.D. 1875). Four Western Apache site components, dating between the late seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries A.D., were identified during excavations conducted in advance of the realignment of the Preacher Canyon and Little Green Valley segments of State Route 260 between Payson and Heber: Plymouth Landing, AZ O:12:89/ AR-03-12-04-1411 (ASM/TNF), McGoonie, AZ O:12:25/AR-03-12-04-743 (ASM/TNF), Ponderosa Campground, AZ O:12:19/AR-03-12-04-1159 (ASM/TNF), and Bonobos Vista, AZ O:12:88/AR-03-12-04-1438 (ASM/TNF). All four sites were situated on the margins of the permanently watered Little Green Valley, and were used as temporary encampments for harvesting juniper berries, black walnuts, and other forest resources. The Apache settlement of this pre-Reservation homeland is introduced here, and is discussed in the context of a larger Apache research program for the project and the region. Due to the nature of Apache material remains, which often go unrecognized, particularly when overlying prehistoric material, little archaeological research has been conducted. The pre-A.D. 1700 Plymouth Landing site is significant as one of the earliest well-documented Apache occupations in the southwestern United States. Additionally, the extraordinary preservation of this site, in conjunction with the results of fieldwork, artifact analyses, and discussions with Apache advisors, provides a basis for not only reconstructing the Apache occupation, but also for assessing the archaeological methods and middle-range theory that can be used in interpretation. Asking why Apache archaeology is of such limited visibility to the archaeologist provides important insights into Apache settlement strategies. Analyses of ceramics, flaked stone, ground stone, macrobotanical, pollen, faunal, and shell artifacts, combined with ethnographic research, show that the Apache components of sites in this region are the remnants of a mobile population, living in an economy dominated by hunting and the collection of arboreal resources, with only limited reliance on cultivated plants. The seventeenth to mid-nineteenth century A.D. Apache families made preferential use of the settlements of their predecessors, and supplemented their own tool assemblages with the extant products of local prehistoric peoples. This, combined with the results of previous research, strongly suggests Apache occupations should no longer be inadvertent discoveries, but rather, expected in this region that was their home for more than 200 years.

The results of archaeological investigations at three prehistoric Hohokam sites within the right-of-way corridor for the Salt River Project Browning to Dinosaur Transmission Line, east of Mesa and Queen Creek, Arizona, are presented in this report. The sites include the Siphon Draw site, AZ U:10:6 (ASM), a pre-Classic period (circa A.D. 800-1000) village; AZ U:10:8 (ASM), a classic period (circa A.D. 1150-1450) wild resource-processing and habitation site; and AZ U:10:172 (ASM), a Colonial period (circa A.D. 800-900) farmstead. Although the Siphon Draw site and U:10:8 had been previously studied in the early 1980s during the Arizona State Museum Salt-Gila Aqueduct project, with a particularly intensive effort at Siphon Draw, the current project provided new details about these sites, as well as an initial characterization of U:10:172. Important and unexpected findings by the Browning to Dinosaur project include the discovery of a new, undocumented pit-houses and an unusual burial at the Siphon Draw site, as well as a prehistoric reservoir at U:10:8. Also unexpected was the occurrence of three pithouses at U:10:172 within the small access road area investigated during the project. Studies of these features and their associated assemblages have provided new insights about residential organization and population size at Siphon Draw and U:10:172, as well as enhanced perspectives concerning settlement, subsistence, interaction, and ritual practices in the Queen Creek locale.