Aug 26
Desert Archaeology project directors Homer Thiel and Gregory Whitney bring us up to speed on the current archaeological understanding of the ancient peoples who first grew crops in southern Arizona, centuries before the introduction of pottery and the development of the Hohokam culture. The Early Agricultural period is the time…
Aug 19
Homer Thiel discusses ancient and historical cultural resources encountered on the grounds of the Historic Pima County Courthouse in Tucson during renovations and the construction of the January 8 Memorial. Pima County has recently completed the renovation of the 1929 Pima County Courthouse, now the home of the Southern Arizona…
Feb 21
Homer Thiel uses historical documents and archaeological data to bring together the story of Hampton Brown, a formerly enslaved man who lived in Territorial period Tucson after escaping from Texas. Peter Enneson assisted with the research for this post. One of the first African-Americans to arrive in Arizona during the…
Jan 13
On January 13, 1982—a Wednesday—Dr. William Doelle moved to Tucson and, days later, finalized a National Park Service contract for a project in Nolic. This marked the start of business for his brand new cultural resources management (CRM) archaeology firm, which set up shop as the Arizona Division of the…
Oct 22
Homer Thiel examines the lives of people who have often been rendered invisible in history: the women who lived in the Tucson Presidio in the 18th and 19th centuries. Tucson, Arizona was a Spanish and Mexican military fortress (the Presidio San Agustín del Tucson) between 1776 and 1856. During this…
Sep 17
“Old” may only be 30-50 years. That’s still pretty cool. 2,500 years is cooler. Erina Gruner discusses spatial patterns in Tucson Basin early agriculturalist pithouse settlements during the Cienega phase, and what the grouping of houses and burials into “house groups” tells us about mobility, social organization, and land ownership.…
Aug 26
Homer Thiel describes the history of some of the military structures you will see when visiting Fort Lowell park in Tucson. In 1873 the soldiers stationed at Camp Lowell in downtown Tucson (now Armory Park) packed up their tents, weapons, and equipment and moved several miles to the northeast. Poor…
Aug 16
Dr. Mary Ownby, Desert’s resident ceramic petrographer, discusses her recent ceramic characterization study in northeastern Colorado, which was published this summer in the Plains Anthropologist journal. When we think of ancient pottery making, we often picture a person sitting quietly, enjoying their craft near their house in a small village.…
Aug 9
Homer Thiel talks about the Hardy Site and what the structures and artifacts recorded there teach us about Hohokam lifeways in the eastern Tucson Basin. The word Hohokam refers to the archaeological culture that existed in the Sonoran Desert from about AD 500 to 1450. The Hohokam are well known…
Jul 27
Homer Thiel takes a long view of Downtown, detailing the traces of people who lived in the area thousands of years before Europeans arrived in what is now southern Arizona. Hidden beneath the streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and buildings of downtown Tucson are traces of our community's Ancestral Native American…