A survey of the Verde drainage

Jackson, Earl

The Verde District has received less consideration in view of its archaeological importance than perhaps any other well defined region in the Southwest. Covering an area about ninety miles long and forty miles broad, radiating from the geographic center of the state, located near Squaw Peak, it lies directly between two very important cultural areas, the Little Colorado Drainage and the Salt River Valley. While considerable work has been done in both the latter regions, nothing of consequence other than survey work of a purely cursory nature had ever been attempted in the Verde area until the summer of 1932, when, under the direction of Dr. Byron Cummings, the King's Ranch Ruin in Chino Valley was excavated and considerable artifact material taken therefrom. Due to the scarcity of excavated ruins in the Verde valley, the material included in this paper will be taken largely from surface observation, with detailed descriptions of such sites as have been carefully worked. These particular sites are few, but I think sufficiently representative, to form a good workable basis of fact which may be valuable in future work. Analysis rather than hypothesis is now in order here; the field is fertile, but must be cultivated before it will yield nourishment to the fruition of sound, constructive premises. I am considering the Verde Drainage in three sections; this division is not purposive of elaboration of triple cultural manifestations, but is a segmental treatment of the whole, based on natural geographic divisions of the area. Physiographic conditions certainly affected facilitation of cultural extension throughout the region, but I am sure there is a decided and continuous association evident from the headwaters of the Verde River to its mouth. Chino Valley and periphery, which I am designating as extending from near Packard's Ranch, ten miles north of Clarkdale, to Bill Williams Mountain, will receive the sparsest treatment. Most of the information about that region was gained through field work by the department of Archaeology in the summer of 1932, and another student is devoting his master thesis solely to that region, hence an elaboration here of the material which he has gathered would be no more than repetition. (Copied verbatim from the thesis.)