The archaeological sites of Pueblo La Plata and Fort Silver
lie in west-central Arizona at the north end of the fourteenth-
century Perry Mesa Settlement System. The Agua
Fria National Monument initiated a study, conducted by
the Western Mapping Company and the Museum of
Northern Arizona, to map the sites and collect a representative
sample of artifacts for permanent curation. This
study includes a history of the research on Perry Mesa and
a review of the recent competing theories about how it was
organized for war or was ecologically degrading its
landscape. The study also provides an analysis of the
relevance of these data to understanding the larger
interaction spheres of the Central Arizona Tradition, the
Verde Confederacy, and the Hopi macroeconomy. Findings
from recent surveys in the Camp Verde–Fossil Creek–
Payson area are summarized to show how they shed new
light on the historical processes that structured the macroregional
interactions from Hopi to Perry Mesa. Fieldwork
methodologies and findings are provided in detail, and the
results are interpreted to test several competing hypotheses.
Extensive data tables on diagnostic ceramic and
obsidian artifacts from the Perry Mesa–Verde Confederacy
sites, and other selected sites, are provided in appendices.
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