Bighorn Cave, located in the Black Mountains of west-central Arizona, is a large shelter with dry stratified deposits dating from the present back to at least the late Archaic. This report presents the findings of an test excavation of the site done to determine the archaeological significance of the cave, to understand the extent and nature of intact cultural deposits, and to determine their ages. The excavation of roughly 15 cu m of undisturbed deposits revealed more than 1 m of complexly stratified deposits and superimposed features from roughly 3000 years of site occupancy.

Bighorn Cave: Test Excavations of a Stratified Dry Shelter, Mohave County, Arizona

History

Americas

Bilby Research Center, NAU

<b>In recent years, the West has suffered</b> from unprecedented stand-replacing wildfires, and the government has invested more money in preventative forest thinning than ever before. This forest crisis has led to much controversy over the Healthy Forests legislation passed by Congress in 2003. On the Colorado Plateau, it has also spurred heated debates regarding the degree to which thinning can truly serve to restore wooded habitats and what reference conditions and or restoration goals are needed to guide such plans. This book offers a primer for understanding how diverse land-use histories have impacted the health of pine-dominated ecosystems in the West and points to measures for better managing them in the future. It draws on a systematic review of the historic effects of land use and climate on ecosystem health, biodiversity, and non-timber forest products in four specific landscapes on the Colorado Plateau—the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico, the Chuska Mountains in Arizona, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and the San Francisco Volcanic Shield in Arizona—all of which have long histories of human occupation and use of forest products. The authors evaluate the degree to which livestock grazing and other cultural land uses have historically reduced the frequency, severity and areal extent of fires, the species richness of understory plants, and the availability of non-timber forest products formerly harvested by Native, Hispanic and Anglo American communities. By examining the many natural and cultural influences upon biodiversity and ecosystem health, a much more robust and site-specific understanding of each place is possible. With improved and localized information, management decisions can be guided by a deeper and broader understanding of reference conditions, current threats, and goals for management and restoration. Now that there is new support for forest management, this book considers how that support can be used not merely to reduce the frequency of property-damaging fires over the short-term, but to restore the overall health and diversity of our woodlands.

Woodlands in Crisis: A Legacy of Lost Biodiversity on the Colorado Plateau (Bibly Research Occasional Papers)

Nabhan, Gary Paul

Coder, Marcelle

Smith, Susan J.

West, Patricia

World

<p>The archaeological sites of Pueblo La Plata and Fort Silver lie in west-central Arizona at the north end of the fourteenth- century Perry Mesa Settlement System. The Agua Fria National Monument initiated a study, conducted by the Western Mapping Company and the Museum of Northern Arizona, to map the sites and collect a representative sample of artifacts for permanent curation. This study includes a history of the research on Perry Mesa and a review of the recent competing theories about how it was organized for war or was ecologically degrading its landscape. The study also provides an analysis of the relevance of these data to understanding the larger interaction spheres of the Central Arizona Tradition, the Verde Confederacy, and the Hopi macroeconomy. Findings from recent surveys in the Camp Verde–Fossil Creek– Payson area are summarized to show how they shed new light on the historical processes that structured the macroregional interactions from Hopi to Perry Mesa. Fieldwork methodologies and findings are provided in detail, and the results are interpreted to test several competing hypotheses. Extensive data tables on diagnostic ceramic and obsidian artifacts from the Perry Mesa–Verde Confederacy sites, and other selected sites, are provided in appendices.</p>

The Archaeology of Perry Mesa and Its World (Bilby Research Center Occasional Papers)

Wilcox, David R.

Holmlund, Jim

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