Archaeological dig uncovers a Prescott Culture home that is more than 1,000 years old. PAUL SULLIVAN Visit the Photo Place

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DIGGING INTO THE PAST

By Paul Sullivan

Date published: 11/17/2007

THERE ARE TIMES when you set out to find one thing and end up discovering something totally unexpected and exciting.

Some call that serendipity. I just say it's what makes life interesting.

In any event, it's what happened not long ago when I set out in search of birds at Willow Lake, in the central Arizona highlands in Prescott.

The bird-finding had been hot there and a friend and I sighted hawks galore, including kestrels, a Cooper's hawk, a lone northern harrier and a zone-tailed hawk--an Arizona rarity.

Two days later we drove to the other side of the mile-wide lake, lately shrunken somewhat by the chronic drought afflicting the entire Southwest.

Right off, we re-found the visiting white pelican, showing up as a large white glob in our binoculars, resting amid a raft of dabbling ducks.

After an hour, I set out in search of "facilities" and spotted what I took to be a large picnic shelter with steel bars. "That's strange," I thought, and walked closer for a look inside.

What I found was an archaeological dig--three digs, actually. From large explanatory panels I learned that these digs were the remains of what had once been home to a community known now as the Prescott Culture.

Prehistoric village

For some 300 years, beginning in A.D. 850, an advanced culture lived in this area, farming the soils along Willow Creek and hunting both small game in the surrounding valley and larger species in nearby mountains to the south and west.

Several years ago archaeologists conducted an extensive excavation at the site, learning much more about these people, who drifted away, possibly to be absorbed into other groups in this part of Arizona in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Apparently no one knows just how many people once lived in the prehistoric village whose remains I now studied, but it must have been fairly extensive for that time since there is solid evidence of about 20 structures in two separate locations on this one streamside hill.

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Date published: 11/17/2007