Prehistory of Perry Mesa:: The Short-lived Settlement of a Mesa-canyon Complex in Central Arizona, ca. A.D. 1200-1450 (The Arizona Archaeologist)

Perry Mesa is a small, isolated plateau lying within the mountainous Transition Zone of central Arizona. During the fourteenth century, the area on and around the mesa was home to a population of Native Americans who built several dozen masonry pueblos, the largest of which are remarkable for their large size—100 or more ground-floor rooms, probably two stories high—and, often, for their dramatic settings at the edges of cliffs overlooking deeply incised canyons. It appears that the people of the Perry Mesa Tradition migrated to this locale, lived there for at most 200 to 300 years, and then moved on. Archaeologists have known of Perry Mesa's archaeological treasures since the 1940s. Due to its remote setting, Perry Mesa preserves an essentially complete Classic period settlement-subsistence system within a bounded environmental setting. This report, a scanned reproduction of the original 1995 Arizona Archaeologist volume, offers important insights into this unique gathering of communities, providing a glimpse of life and survival in the mesa’s harsh, but resource-rich central Arizona environment.