History in Our Neighborhood
By Carol Ellick
carolellick@gmail.com
In December, a plan was proposed to expand the cement pad in Wes Miller Park. Before moving forward, the HOA Board discussed the plan with representatives from the Nature Conservancy to ensure that expanding the existing pad wouldn’t impact the Conservation Easement agreement or the environment. But, stewardship of the environment goes beyond ecology; it includes the protection and preservation of our cultural history. To address this, I contacted Pete Cinquemani and suggested we check to make sure that construction wouldn’t impact any cultural resources.
The good news is that the cement pad is in a flood zone area that has experienced repeated scouring. The pad sits on fill that was brought in prior to the original pad being laid. No evidence of prior human use of this particular area exists. That doesn’t mean people didn’t use this flat, it means they were smart enough not to build a house or a village in the flood zone. But, people did use this area.
The history in our Hidden Valley neighborhood didn’t simply begin when Wes Miller began designing it in the 1960s. We are simply the most recent chapter in this story. The history of our properties extends back through time… beyond ranching, beyond use by the O’odham Indians, back at least 2,000 years.
Our neighborhood sits in a unique landscape for the Tucson Basin and the Sonoran Desert. Here, we have access to all the resources that satisfy basic human needs—water, food, and shelter. Throughout time, people visited this area for: water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and irrigating crops; mesquite beans for boiling or making flour; wood for fires and building; sand to temper clay for making pottery; devil’s claw for weaving baskets; and animals to hunt for food. People built houses, ramadas, temporary camps, and villages. Over time, we lose evidence of the human past through rot and erosion. The remains provide information for the stories about our history and heritage. The objects (artifacts), patterns (features) of rocks, burned soil, and remnants of trash are all we have left to interpret their lives.
My husband and I are archaeologists. Since moving to Hidden Valley in 2018, we have walked the roads in our neighborhood and the paths in our park. We’ve seen evidence of human occupation and past use in the park, but we’ve also seen the evidence disappear. It’s exciting to visit a site and see a beautiful decorated black and white piece of pottery or a stone hunting point from a spear or arrow. To touch these artifacts connects us to this place. It engages the imagination, allowing us to ask questions and create stories. Perhaps someone used the finely-decorated black and white bowl for eating a special meal. Did it break when it was dropped as someone stumbled while carrying it to be washed? Maybe the arrow was lost while chasing down a deer.
We put these objects back. They survived time and their story is linked to the context in which they were found.
The pottery and stone tools in our park and neighborhoods were primarily made by the ancestors of the O’odham Indians. These people lived in the Sonoran Desert from about A.D. 300 to 1500. The culture, known as the Hohokam, were hunters, gatherers, and farmers. They developed small and large villages, complex irrigation canals, and they traded their wares throughout the region. The beautiful black and white piece of pottery was most likely traded from northern Arizona.
Over time, as we have visited the site, the evidence of human use has disappeared. The stone hunting points and decorated pottery pieces are gone, leaving only tiny, plain fragments of people’s existence. The story of the past has been altered. We can no longer share these items and their stories with neighbors and friends. We can only share the sadness of their loss.
We are all stewards of not only the natural aspects of our neighborhood and park, we are stewards of the cultural heritage of this place. I’m sorry that I can’t take you to the site in our park and show you the beautiful black and white pottery fragment or the arrowhead. They are gone. If you have removed items from the sites, please put them back so their story can continue. If you have a site on your property, we’d be happy visit to tell you more about it.