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Site Last Updated:
October 06, 2009
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Las Capas Archaeological Site Tour - March 27, 2008
Eleven people went on the field trip to the Las Capas archaeological site in
Tucson. Las Capas was being excavated by Desert Archaeology,
a contract archaeology firm in Tucson. Several recent Pima College
Archaeology Centre students (Katie Bubnekovich, James Litel, Judy Begay-Taylor, Emily Engan,
Matt Franz, Jessie
South, and Ernestine Tom) have worked on the excavation crew for this site.
Las Capas is a large Early Agricultural period site that was occupied and
farmed between about 1200 and 750 B.C. Until recently, data
obtained by archaeologists in the Southwest suggested that the Hohokam, who
inhabited the region from about 50 to 1450 A.D., were the first to use complex
irrigation canal systems. The finds at Las Capas indicate however that
farmers were using extensive systems of canals in Arizona more than a thousand
years before the Hohokam, providing the earliest evidence to date of canal
systems of such sophistication in the Southwest.
Jim Vint of Desert Archaeology begins the site tour while Arch Centre Coordinator Helen O'Brien holds up a site map and students Lucy and Jean look on Jim shows us lines indicating sediment deposition in the profile of a prehistoric canal. PCC students and staff watch while the Las Capas field crew digs out hundreds of prehistoric pits. PCC students Jamie Madden and others watch the backhoe do its thing. Still digging out pits over there, as far as we can tell. Archaeologists have outlined field system features with white spray paint. Ernestine was a field archaeology student last year; now she's a real live field archaeologist at Las Capas. Overview of one area of Las Capas. Jim shows us a series of canals in profile. Jessie (sporting a pretty pink hardhat) was a hardworking Archaeology Centre student last year; now she's hard at work profiling prehistoric canals. Field archaeologists Emily and Jessie were PCC archaeology students just last year; Dr. Tineke Van Zandt teaches anthropology and archaeology at PCC.
Las Capas is thought to have been abandoned after flooding that also preserved the features at the site under layers of sediment. In addition to canals, features at Las Capas include pithouses and thousands of storage and roasting pits. During the Early Agricultural period, ceramic containers were not yet being produced so pits were used for cooking and storage. Many of the features at Las Capas were identified several meters below the modern ground surface. A backhoe which a special stripping blade was used to scrape away the soil above these features to expose their outlines. In this picture: Arch Centre staff person Lea Mason-Kohlmeyer in the foreground, students Lucy and Dan, and anthropology instructorTineke Van Zandt in the green hat. The canals diverted water from the nearby Santa Cruz River into a series of small fields delineated by low earthen berms. Gates across the canals allowed farmers to divert water into different fields at different times.
Jim Vint of Desert Archaeology begins the site tour while Arch Centre Coordinator Helen O'Brien holds up a site map and students Lucy and Jean look on
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