Hohokam Archaeology along the Salt-Gila Aqueduct Central Arizona Project, Volume V: Small Habitation Sites on Queen Creek

This volume includes reports of archaeological mitigation activities undertaken at sltes located along the route of the Salt-Gila Aqueduct (SGA), Central Arizona Project, under contract No. 0-07-32V0101 from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. This is the fifth volume of a nine volume series. The aqueduct, under construction by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, is a 58-mile-long component of the Central Arizona Project beginning east of Phoenix and extending to the vicinity of the Picacho Mountains. This volume is concerned with the excavations at five relatively small sites located near Queen Creek; all are directly affected by the construction of the aqueduct and the Sonoqui Dike, a flood-control earthen dam. The five sites are interpreted as temporary field houses or permanent homesteads by utilizing a variety of artifactual, architectural, and environmental data. AZ U:14:73 is a farmstead site occupied during the Sacaton-Soho transition. The three pit houses and associated features excavated at this site supply information on the nature of the transition in the Queen Creek area. AZ U:15:97 is a multicomponent field house site with 11 small, insubstantial structures. Occupied during the Gila Butte, Santa Cruz, and Sacaton phases, it provides the earliest evidence of farming and occupation along this portion of Queen Creek. Another field house site, AZ U: 15:57, has a single, temporarily occupied structure and was utilized during the late Sacaton phase. This site provides the basis for a detailed discussion of differences between temporary and permanently occupied sites in the Hohokam area. AZ U:15:99 is also a Sacaton phase field house site with a single structure. Finally, excavations at AZ U:15:62 revealed a single, substantial, Sacaton phase pit house apparently occupied year-round. Taken together, these sites indicate that the Queen Creek area was used for farming from the Gila Butte through early Soho phases. Such small sites occupied for relatively short periods of tIme furnish significant evidence for interpretaing the interrelated changes in subsistence and organization of this portion of the Hohokam regional system.