Tuzigoot National Monument, Tuzigoot, Arizona
By MARLEY BROWN
Monday, October 16, 2017
On a desert ridge in Arizona’s Verde Valley sits Tuzigoot National Monument, the ruins of a 110-room pueblo built about 1,000 years ago by a pre-Columbian culture archaeologists call the Sinagua. Tuzigoot was originally excavated in the 1930s with funding from the New Deal Works Progress Administration. It was also then that one of the first excavators, who was Apache, gave the site its name, which means “crooked water” in the Apache language. The history of the Sinagua people is shrouded in mystery, as they had abandoned Tuzigoot and other settlements in the area by the time the Spanish arrived. They are known for the remains of their pit houses and pueblos that dot central Arizona, as well as clay pottery called Alameda Brown Ware, and expansive, intricate petroglyphs that seem to whirl across rock faces. While the exact reason for the Sinagua’s departure from the Verde Valley remains unknown, Native American oral histories provide clues that supplement archaeological data. “Tuzigoot and other Sinagua settlements appear in the oral history,” explains Matt Guebard, chief of resources management and archaeologist at Tuzigoot. “Our interpretation of the site is absolutely informed by collaboration with native communities.”
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/275-1711/from-the-trenches/6013-trenches-arizona-tuzigoot-national-monument
