Excavations in the Santa Cruz River Floodplain

Excavations in the Santa Cruz floodplain in 1995 provided important new data concerning the Middle Archaic period in southern Arizona. The work reported here represents the first intensive investigation of a stratified Middle Archaic site in the Tucson Basin. Eleven radiocarbon dates place the occupation between approximately 2600 and 1900 B.C.

Analyses of the data collected shed new light on a number of important issues: subsistence and settlement immediately prior to the introduction of maize; the dating of the Middle Archaic interval itself; and the dating of Cortaro style projectile points, the dominant form represented at the site. The project also contributed significantly to knowledge of the Holocene depositional history of the Santa Cruz floodplain, particularly as it relates to the lengthy sequence of human occupation and use of this environment.

CDA Anthropological Papers, No. 20 David A. Gregory is a staff archaeologist at Desert Archaeology, Inc. He has thirty years' experience in Arizona archaeology and has directed numerous projects in the Phoenix and Tucson basins.