Malcolm Rogers' Arizona Fieldwork, 1926–1956
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Malcolm Rogers’ Arizona Fieldwork, 1926–1956 Jerry Schaefer Abstract received a one-line notation, perhaps to index surface collections, while those with the greatest interest to Malcolm Rogers was the father of Far Southwest desert archaeol- ogy. Almost single-handedly, and with much personal sacrifice, he him were documented with several pages, up to 50 conducted independent surveys in southern California and Arizona pages for White Tanks, including maps and rock art from which he developed a culture sequence for the region. Much sketches. Generally, his note taking was descrip- of his work remains the foundation for current artifact typologies and culture chronologies. His California work is well known and tive and concise. By today’s standards some entries frequently referenced, not so for his work in Arizona, including would be considered too brief for practical use and survey, surface collection, and excavation, which also contributed hardly enough to fill out a site form. Other notes to Rogers’ mega-regional archaeological worldview. His field notes, maps, sketches, and collections at the San Diego Museum of Man are full of insightful observations and interpreta- provide a window into how he worked and thought. tions. (All quotations below are from his handwritten notes). For example, at Cave #5 of site A-1-C, one Introduction of the first sites he recorded, his description of the rock art is a good example from the beginning of his Malcolm Rogers was no provincial who might draw Arizona fieldwork: empirical blinders at the Colorado River. He saw the entire Far Southwest desert region as a unified whole The cave is 50 ft. wide and the back wall with a connected cultural history and connected influ- and ceiling are covered with white, black, ences. Western Arizona was very much part of that purplish red, hematite red and orange red pic- whole (Figure 1). His field notebook and photographs tographs. There is much superimposition and archived at the San Diego Museum of Man provide smudging by fires and some vandalism which a window into his world during the period between make it impossible to decipher the construc- 1926 and 1956 as he accumulated information and tion of about half the work. The purple reds developed and revised the concepts that finally re- and white ones are the oldest and the hema- sulted in his grand synthesis of Far Southwest cultural tite red, orange and black the youngest. In history and archaeology, edited and posthumously some instances the white was applied to a published by Richard Pourade (Rogers 1966). smudged white tuff background. This gives a negative effect. Some pictos are outlined with A review of his 30-year career in Arizona is present- two colors red and white or red and black. ed here along with inferences drawn about both his Some reds have been retraced with white. All field strengths and weaknesses. Rogers kept a sepa- the pictographs of this region are character- rate notebook for his Arizona work and numbered the ized by small size and fine lines. Many have sites he investigated from A-1 to A-134. Some sites the appearances [of] pottery designs. The key Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly, Volume 48, Numbers 3 and 4 32 Schaefer Figure 1. Some of Malcolm Rogers’ fieldwork localities discussed in the text. (1) Secret Pass and Meadow Creek; (2) Borrego Tanks, Gila Mountains; (3) Intersection of Trails A-26 and A-29; (4) White Tanks; (5) Signal Spring, McCracken Basin; (6) Alamo; (7) Bridle Creek; (8) Site A- 26 Trail System; (9) Bouse Wash. PCAS Quarterly 48(3&4) Malcolm Rogers’ Arizona Fieldwork, 1926–1956 33 and maze element types are common in the He had to rely on poor, small-scale maps for the most older pictos. part, and he supplemented these with sketch maps at various scales. Rogers documented the sites with nu- Of another rock art site, A-2 (Figure 2), he wrote: merous field photographs, usually taken by his father, who accompanied him on many of his field trips, or by A-2 = Caves No. 1 & No. 2. Cave #1 is 40’ other staff who worked with him. Some of this record wide and the entire back wall and ceiling of remains invaluable, as he noted that some rockshelters white tuff is covered with pictographs and a had collapsed since his first visits and other sites had few petroglyphs. The later have all been filled washed away. in with a bright red paint, but most of them especially the great snake pattern was first Early Fieldwork painted with a bluish black paint and the red put on later over it. In the floor are 3 bedrock His earliest Arizona work focused on Secret Pass mortars and in the cave parts of 3 thick flat in the Black Mountains between the Mohave Val- toped [sic] metates. The fill as early as 1928 ley and Kingman. This corridor is populated with had been washed out but the talus produced impressive cave sites and rock art along a major Pueblo, Mohave and Walapai sherds and east-west trail about which his field notes are quoted [some?] stone work. In 1928 the roof of Cave above. He recognized a mix of Mohave (i.e., Pa- #2 directly east of #1 had fallen so that it tayan), Pueblo, and Yavapai brown ware ceramics rested on the crown of the occupational talus. in this complex, representing the cultural influences In 1941 it was found that a cloud burst had and interactions that shaped the region’s late pre- completely destroyed the site. #2 contains 2 historic and ethnohistoric cultural history. By 1928 flat metates and one ancient petroglyph. he was focused on the isolated Meadow Creek site Figure 2. Multiple layers of petroglyphs and pictographs at site A-2, Cave #1. Copyright San Diego Museum of Man. PCAS Quarterly 48(3&4) 34 Schaefer complex along Sitgreaves Pass on Route 66 between Bill Williams River Valley (Swansea Basin caves Topock and Kingman. He returned to the riches of and Alamo), Groom Mountain, Rawhide Canyon, these rockshelter sites in October 1941 to dig three and Burro Creek. From there he moved southeast test trenches in the deep middens at the entrance of to the Wickenberg area, including Bridle Creek Site A-2-F, Cave #10, the site he thought had “the and Congress Junction, all in west-central Arizona. greatest occupational deposit in the pass” (Figure 3). Much of his interest was in ethnohistoric Wala- Screening as he went and exposing hearth features pai and Yavapai camps and in the many cave sites and midden deposits in 6 ft of strata, he recognized throughout the area. His background in geology and San Dieguito III, Amargosa II, transitional pre-pot- his understanding of lithic reduction processes were tery, and Yuman horizons. Here he saw a mix of clearly put to use at the quarry sites, such as at A-12 dart points and small projectile points in the upper in the McCraken Basin, of which he wrote: Amargosa deposits, positing correctly that the bow and arrow arrived in the Basketmaker III period. As On the residual flanglomerate [sic] fingers in elsewhere over time, the strikeouts and revisions of the basin is a very extensive quarry industry his notes indicate his reappraisal of the dates and cul- in pinkish gray rhyolite and some jasper. tural assignments. For example, “Amargosa II with Greatest linear extension one mile. We could the possibility of some San Dieguito II” is changed find no evidence in the basin of where the to San Dieguito III for site A-2-B. people lived who worked this deposit of rhyolite boulders. Blade-blanks are very His other early work continued to focus on the scarce even broken ones but the patination uplands of west-central Arizona around Kingman. is of a degree and the work of the nature It took him to Truxton Canyon (7B Ranch), the tur- that the site could be identified as belong- quoise mines at Mineral Park, Round Valley, Signal ing to the pre-Yuman dart-point industry of Valley, the rhyolite quarries of McCraken Basin, the western Arizona. Figure 3. Malcolm Rogers (with shovel) and an as- sociate beginning work at site A-2-F, October 1941. Copyright San Diego Museum of Man. PCAS Quarterly 48(3&4) Malcolm Rogers’ Arizona Fieldwork, 1926–1956 35 In his surveys through this area, Rogers identified the Tank, although the extensive occupation in caves and small obsidian nodules in the alluvial valley fans from mesas in front of the caves is not documented as yet which small points were being made. More recent during recent surveys of the extensive trail systems and work at White Tanks has further characterized these ceramic scatters in the vicinity (Schaefer and Richards “Apache Tears,” as they are commonly called (Shack- 2010). In Rogers’ notes there is the first reference to In- ley 1991, 1996). Survey work continued in west-cen- dian trails and associated ceramics that would be of so tral Arizona near Bridle Creek and Congress Junction. much interest to him in developing a ceramic typology and chronology. In this case he acknowledged the trail At site A-22, a “Yavapai Camp” on a creek that drains running southeast from the tanks to Tinajas Altas, also into Bridle Creek, his notes demonstrate the types of known as the Camino del Diablo. observations he made and the conclusions he drew from them: Throughout his career Rogers continued his keen in- terest in the larger sites at water sources and the trails At the east end and back of the camp on the that led to them.