By Matthew A. Peeples, Ph.D.

Central Arizona is often characterized as a crossroads where different people and environments intersect. This region spans rugged lands between the upland Colorado Plateau and the lowland Sonoran Desert along the beautiful and diverse transition where saguaros meet pinyons and juniper. This landscape is the traditional homeland for many different Indigenous groups spanning millennia, including the Yavapai, Apache and Hopi, and in recent centuries has seen the arrival of Spanish expeditions looking for gold and silver, fur trappers, railroad crews, miners, Mexican and European settlers, soldiers and the Arizona territorial and US governments.

The history of this region as a cultural crossroads is not a recent phenomenon. Archaeologists recognize such diversity extends into early Indigenous settlement of the area. Archaeologists use buildings and belongings left by ancient people to reconstruct lives and cultures in the past. When they find similar kinds of houses, pottery, stone tools, baskets and artistic expressions among many sites through time they can define archaeological cultures. Archaeological cultures aren’t the same as contemporary culture groups like the Yavapai or Apache, but are perhaps a bit broader, representing large zones where people lived in similar ways and interacted but probably also spoke different languages and saw themselves as distinct communities. Consider Western European vs. Eastern European people for example.

The Verde Valley and the broader Central Arizona Highlands sit at the intersection of traditional definitions of several archaeological cultures, including the Sinagua, Mogollon, Hohokam and Patayan regions. Diversity and intermixing of traditions in this area have long fascinated archaeologists. For example, the ancient inhabitants of the Perry Mesa region within the Agua Fria National Monument made cooking and storage pottery using a method called “paddle and anvil” construction. This entails a potter flattening and smoothing the moist clay sides of a pot by placing a smooth stone anvil on one side of a vessel and patting the opposite side with a wooden paddle. This is a method of pottery making with a long history in the Sonoran Desert in the Hohokam archaeological region that continues among contemporary Indigenous potters in Southern Arizona today. Buildings and houses built by these same ancient inhabitants of the Perry Mesa region, however, consisted of large stone pueblo constructions similar to Tuzigoot, Montezuma’s Castle and numerous sites on the Colorado Plateau near Hopi and beyond. In this area we see cooking pot technology pointing towards connections further south and houses showing strong connections further north. This diversity suggests that people in the region were well-acquainted with their nearest neighbors, and individual settlements may have even included people from many different places.

Beyond the diversity of local connections, ancient peoples of Central Arizona also had connections to cultures further afield. Copper bells, likely from west Mexico, have been found at archaeological sites in the Prescott area. Scarlet macaw remains suggesting live birds from tropical Mesoamerica have been recovered from Montezuma’s Castle, Tuzigoot and other settlements in the region. Jewelry made from shells from the Sea of Cortez and Pacific Ocean are common throughout the region. A rare stone knife produced from distinctive chert material from Wyoming (often called tiger chert due to the striped coloration) was recovered at a site near Bumblebee, Arizona. Altogether this suggests that ancient people of this region had social networks and connections spanning thousands of miles. This is remarkable for a time when all travel was by foot. Evidence like this invites us to think of ancient Central Arizona not as an isolated mountainous region but as a cosmopolitan, diverse place marked by connections spanning Arizona and beyond.

March 1st, Sharlot Hall Museum’s Education Center, 2pm to 3pm, see Matthew A. Peeples, Ph.D. 's lecture: “Central Arizona as a Crossroads in the Past and Present”- Check our Event Calendar https://sharlothallmuseum.org/event-calendar/  for ticket information.

“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.archives.sharlothallmuseum.org/articles/days-past-articles/1. The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles and inquiries to dayspast@sharlothallmuseum.org Please contact SHM Research Center reference desk at 928-277-2003, or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information or assistance with photo requests.