Archaeological Research Facility

The analysis here of 177 obsidian artifacts from the Cienega Phase Early Agricultural Los Pozos site in the Santa Cruz River basin in Tucson, Arizona indicates a very diverse provenance assemblage with sources in all Cardinal directions from the western and eastern Sonoran Desert, the Arizona Uplands, to northwest Mexico (Sonora and Chihuahua). Some of these sources (i.e. Cow Canyon) have been recovered from Los Pozos in the past as discussed below. The diversity of sources with a procurement radius of approximately 250 km in all directions was not evident before this, in part due to the rarity of obsidian in Cienega Phase sites in the Tucson Basin.