FAUNAL RESOURCES AND HUMAN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS IN THE SAN SIMON VALLEY, SOUTHEASTERN ARIZONA

Material remains (e.g., ceramics, ground stone, and flaked stone) and demographic data show that the San Simon Basin in southeastern Arizona supported numerous small-scale farming communities in the Late Archaic and Pit Structure periods. Residents of the basin during these periods used the resources of their immediate environments more intensively than earlier occupants of the area, and their actions may have contributed to a population crash at the end of the Pit Structure period. The earliest faunal assemblages, with their virtual lack of large-bodied taxa, suggest that residents of the San Simon Basin quickly impacted their fragile desert environment. All San Simon faunal assemblages differ from coeval communities in the nearby Mimbres and Hohokam regions in that they contain fewer taxa and specifically fewer large-bodied taxa (e.g., artiodactyls).