In collaboration with Jen Kitson

These artifacts were found in the Coronado Historic Neighborhood, a central Phoenix community located between 7th Street, Thomas Road, and both the State Route-51 and Interstate-10 freeways. Although considered a relatively young city, Phoenix has a legendary pre-historic legacy. Believed to have originated around the beginning of the Common Era and lasted into the 15th century, the Hohokam were an advanced, ancient society famous for their intricate canal system and irrigated agricultural practices. Underneath this expansive metropolis lie the remains of a lost civilization.

In the early 1980s, archeologists excavated a Hohokam site named Casa Buena at what is now the eastern boundary of the Coronado Historic neighborhood. These artifacts were excavated during the construction of of SR-51, now known as Piestewa Freeway (formerly known as Squaw Peak Parkway). The excavated artifacts were collected, photographed, and are now housed at the Casa Grande museum. Thirty years later, in the same location, Phoenician artifacts are again collected, photographed, and displayed here with these thoughts by Omar A. Turney, who named and excavated Casa Buena, in mind.

“In some districts of Phoenix, a future archeologist may find one-room dwellings, with dirt floors, with clay-lined fireplaces, with stone implements for preparing food; while in another part of the city he may find electric devices for human comfort, and for wireless communication, and perchance in a basement he may find a copper receptacle with a long coiled pipe, and many bottles with tied-in corks.”

“…The ancient peoples were not the only fetish worshipers.”

– Omar Turney, 1929, Prehistoric Irrigation