Norton Allen's Excavations in the San Pedro and Dripping Spring Valleys of Southeastern Arizona

Abstract

Although the majority of the Norton Allen Collection consists of materials from the Gila Bend area, a small group of objects was recov ered from sites in southeastern Arizona. In this article, I present an overview of these artifacts and discuss their significance. I begin by describing the process by which Norton's site names were matched with those used by other researchers and the designations currently employed by the Arizona State Museum (ASM). Next, I report on the artifacts recovered. This collection, dominated by pottery, has the potential to expand our knowledge of migration by Kayenta groups into southern Arizona as well as the rise and demise of the Salado phe nomenon. Furthermore, the collection includes a sample from a mostly destroyed site (affording researchers a better understanding of ancient settlement in the Dripping Spring Valley), it improves knowledge of locally produced pottery types, and it fleshes out distributional patterns associated with late, intrusive pottery types from the Hopi Mesas, the Zuni area, and Chihuahua. Most items in the Allen Collection recovered from sites in the vicin ity of Gila Bend are associated with detailed contextual information, allowing researchers to use them in a wide variety of ways (e.g., Doyel 2008; Wasley and Johnson 1965). Unfortunately, the portion of the collection from southeastern Arizona?the majority of which was assembled relatively early in Allen's avocational archaeological career?is spottier in terms of documentation. In some cases, different sources, including notes written on containers and the backs of photographs, provide contradictory information regarding the provenience of a given