Prehistoric village is found near San Pedro River, North America
Submitted by coldrum on Wednesday, 25 February 2009 Page Views: 1647
DigsThe construction of the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2007 led to the discovery of a prehistoric village east of the San Pedro River.Evidence found at the "Upper San Pedro Village" indicates that it was a crossroads, or a type of "gateway community,"
"The San Pedro is a special place," said archaeologist Maren Hopkins, the project director, presenting to the Tubac/Santa Cruz County Chapter of the Arizona Archaeological Society. She said the village was probably the biggest data-recovery project that she has directed. Hopkins has been digging for 10 years in many places in Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico.
"It's a peripheral site to the Tucson Basin ... it's peripheral to all these areas. So these people were kind of a mix of people. It was frontier then, just like it is now."
The village is believed to have existed from around A.D. 700 to 1200, Hopkins said, based on ceramics analysis. There appear to be some Hohokam characteristics, but it is uncertain who lived there.
Archaeologists found: 23 pit houses, 14 possible pit houses, 97 thermal pits, a number of storage pits, five dog burials and 69 human burials. As is customary in this region, the human remains have been repatriated to the Tohono O'Odham Indian Reservation.
Northland, her company, was contracted to do archaeological work for the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers and the U.S. Department Homeland Security so that they could comply with federal archaeological laws. In October 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff pushed ahead with the fence, winning federal court approval of the waiving of environmental restrictions.
"It is a sensitive subject," Hopkins said of the border politics.
She told the Tubac archaeology society how complicated her work was, because of the numerous government and private agencies involved. Those included ranchers on the U.S. and Mexico side, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Arizona National Guard, just to name a few.
Hopkins said there was genuine concern for archaeologists' safety when they were working in another site along the border. She was referring to the violent smuggling corridor of Altar Valley, Ariz.
Overall, the archaeologists dealt with multiple jurisdictions and a lot of curious people.
Mexican archaeologists were among the interested parties, and their American counterparts are collaborating with them, Hopkins said.
One restriction posed by the U.S. government was that the archaeologists could only dig 5 feet deep, because that was as far as they were digging for the fence's footers. Below that depth, "The archaeology, I guarantee, keeps going," Hopkins said.
The site has been reburied. Hopkins has not been back for many months.
"There's a fence there now," she said.
For more, see Nogales International. The general area of this village site is shown here.
Note: Salvage on location of border security fence. Archaeologist describes "gateway" village of a thousand years ago - and political interactions of today.
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