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<< Other Photo Pages >> Las Capas - Ancient Village or Settlement in United States in The Southwest

Submitted by bat400 on Monday, 05 October 2009  Page Views: 12751

Multi-periodSite Name: Las Capas Alternative Name: The Layers
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 13.877 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: The Southwest Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Tucson, AZ
Latitude: 32.329000N  Longitude: 111.057W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
1 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
1 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
3 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
3

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Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Ancient Village in Pima County, Arizona.
Village with irrigation canals build as early as 1200BC. The canals appear to have been periodically maintained until 800 BC. At this point a flood appears to have caused enough damage for the site to have been abandoned.

Called Las Capas (the Layers) for the layers of sediment seen in the excavation, the village is in the Santa Cruz river valley, near where the Cañada del Oro and Rillito Creek join the river.
The site was found during surveys associated with the improvement of access and frontage roads near Arizona's I-10 highway and Tucson's Ina Road waste water treatment facility. Desert Archaeology Inc has conducted the excavations of this site since its discovery in 1998.

Note: The location listed is approximate, but based on photographs and news video of the excavation.

Note: Arizona Excavations spurred by development find earliest irrigation canals in US southwest.
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Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : Presumably from an open day at the ancient village site Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : Ancient village with irrigation canals built as early as 1200BC. The canals appear to have been periodically maintained until 800 BC. Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : The white spray painted areas are prehistoric canals. Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr (Vote or comment on this photo)

Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : Called Las Capas (the Layers) for the layers of sediment seen in the excavation, the village is in the Santa Cruz river valley, near where the Cañada del Oro and Rillito Creek join the river. Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : The site was found during surveys associated with the improvement of access and frontage roads near Arizona's I-10 highway and Tucson's Ina Road waste water treatment facility. Desert Archaeology Inc has conducted the excavations of this site since its discovery in 1998. Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API.

Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : The white spray painted areas are prehistoric canals. Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API.

Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : The site was found during surveys associated with the improvement of access and frontage roads near Arizona's I-10 highway and Tucson's Ina Road waste water treatment facility. Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API.

Las Capas
Las Capas submitted by Flickr : Presumably from an open day at the ancient village site Image copyright: patt.meeples (Matt Peeples), hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API.

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"Las Capas" | Login/Create an Account | 3 News and Comments
  
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Tucson AZ area Dig reveals ancient irrigated fields by bat400 on Monday, 05 October 2009
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The discovery of a prehistoric irrigation system in the Marana desert is giving archaeologists a deeper glimpse into one of the first groups of people to farm in the Tucson basin. "What we're looking at is, perhaps, the earliest sedentary village life in the Southwest with people depending on agriculture as a primary food source," said project director Jim Vint.

For more than 3,000 years, an elaborate ancient irrigation system has remained hidden deep beneath the sand in Marana. In January, excavation at the Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation Facility at Ina Road and Interstate 10 revealed the ancient irrigation system. It is said to be the most intricate system of its kind uncovered in North America.

"We've uncovered dozens of these fields. We can see the actual holes where they planted the corn in many instances" geologist Fred Nials said. "We can completely reconstruct their irrigation system."

The $6.8 million project at a site — called "Las Capas," or "The Layers" — is part of an expansion of the Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation Facility.

What the archaeologists found was more than they ever expected, said Desert Archaeology President Bill Doelle. "Usually what people have found when digging in the flood plain is the main irrigation ditch that diverts water out of the river; they'll just see that ditch," he said. "We had no idea that whole field systems are also preserved in that flood plain sediment." The field system, which spans about 60 to 80 acres, is just downstream from where the Cañada del Oro and Rillito join the Santa Cruz River. The site was revealed by scraping away thin layers in broad 7-foot sections using a backhoe.

"If you take that really thin scrape, it's really amazing how features can just appear from a couple inches of soil being removed," said Loy Neff, program manager at the Pima County Cultural Resources and Historic Preservation Office.

The archaeologists were able to recognize the outlines of fields, canals, pits and housing sites by different compositions that appeared in the dirt. For instance, the flow of river water through canals and into fields left sediment that could be seen as soil was scraped away.

The group has now discovered more than 200 individual maize fields and more than 170 canals of various sizes throughout six major layers of sediment. The topmost or most recent layer dates to 800 B.C., and the sixth layer, which is about 13 feet underground, dates to about 1200 B.C.

These "layers," produced by periodic flooding of the river, reveal the story of one of the first groups of people to recognize the enormous potential of the Santa Cruz River and agriculture. These pre-Hohokam peoples, thought to be ancestors of today's Tohono O'odham Indians, depended on the river for their livelihood.

The lack of crop variety in the fields suggests that this was one of the earliest attempts to shift away from a hunting and gathering lifestyle, said Vint, Las Capas project director.

Archaeologists at the site have also found a variety of hunting tools, as well as human and animal remains. The recovered artifacts will be analyzed and logged, then sent with photos and maps to the Arizona State Museum to be curated. Desert Archaeology Inc. is wrapping up the Las Capas project on Wednesday. Work on the new building that will cover the site will begin as early as November.

For more, see AZ Star Net.
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Southwest's earliest major irrigation system unearthed in Arizona by bat400 on Friday, 17 July 2009
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Submitted by coldrum ---

Archaeologists preparing for the expansion of a Tucson wastewater treatment facility have discovered the remains of the earliest known irrigation system in the Southwest, a farming community that dates to at least 1200 BC.

That predates the well-known and much more sophisticated Hohokam tribe's canal system, which crisscrossed what is now Phoenix, by 1,200 years. The find suggests that the people who inhabited the region began with relatively simple irrigation systems and built up to more complex projects as the climate became hotter and drier.

"These are not the earliest canals known in southern Arizona, but they are the most extensive and sophisticated engineering [from the period] that we have identified to date," said archaeologist James M. Vint of Desert Archaeology Inc. in Tucson.

Researchers already knew that the site had been inhabited during what is known as the San Pedro phase of the Early Agriculture Period in the Southwest. Earlier work at the plant had revealed traces of pit houses, fire pits and ditches. What is believed to be the main dwelling is now buried under the adjacent Interstate 10.

Vint led a team of 30 archaeologists who explored the site in compliance with state laws before a planned expansion of the Ina Road facility. "We put in a mile and a half of backhoe trenches and did archaeology in all those trenches," he said in a telephone interview. "That tells us this is a very expansive site."

They identified two main canals bringing water from the Santa Cruz River and feeding it into eight distribution canals, all now buried 3 to 7 feet. The system could have irrigated 60 to 100 acres, he estimated. The primary crops were maize, which was introduced into the area before 2100 BC, and an herb known as amaranth. Pottery was not yet produced in the region, but Vint's team found stone and cutting tools, grinding stones, antler pieces for making stone tools, and awls for basketry.

The evidence indicates that the region suffered a huge flood about 800 BC, which buried the canal system. "There is some evidence that they tried getting it going again, but apparently that didn't work," Vint said. They cleaned out some sections, "but they never brought it back to full scale."



For more, see the LA Times.
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Ancient Village Discovered Near Tucson by bat400 on Friday, 17 July 2009
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See an earlier article about this site quoted on the Megalithic Portal.
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