The Roosevelt Rural Sites Study, Volume 3: Changing Land Use in the Tonto Basin
Edited by Richard Ciolek-Torrello and John R. Welch
Technical Series 28, Vol. 3
696 pp. / 1994
The Roosevelt Rural Sites Study (RRSS) was one of three data recovery mitigative studies that the Bureau of Reclamation funded to investigate the prehistory of the Tonto Basin in the vicinity of Theodore Roosevelt Dam. The series of investigations constituted Reclamation’s program for complying with historic preservation legislation as it applied to the raising and modification of Theodore Roosevelt Dam. Reclamation contracted with Statistical Research, Inc., to conduct this study.
The RRSS was a two-year mitigative data designed to study small habitation, agricultural, and resource processing sites, which are located away from the main centers of prehistoric habitation in the Tonto Basin, and to contribute to an ongoing synthetic study of Tonto Basin prehistory. The specific research focus of the Roosevelt Rural Sites Study in Reclamation’s overall compliance program was the evolution of prehistoric rural land-use systems in the Tonto Basin. Twenty-nine prehistoric sites grouped into six study areas located in the bajada zone surrounding the lake on lands administered by the Tonto National Forest comprise the data base for this study.
The RRSS Volume 3, the final of three volumes, presents the results of archaeobotanical, soil, and paleoclimatic analyses. These results are examined within an interpretive framework developed from an examination of records pertaining to ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and historic land-use in central Arizona. The volume concludes with several synthetic chapters. These chapters relate changing rural land-use patterns to demographic and paleoclimatic factors and the overall changes in settlement and subsistence in the Tonto Basin. Finally, the authors attempt to identify the implications of this research for important issues in Tonto Basin prehistory, such as sociopolitical complexity and cultural affiliation.
