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At the request of the Salt River Project, the Museum of Northern Arizona has conducted an intensive survey of the proposed Coronado Generating Station Coal Haul Railroad right-of-way. A total of 55 sites was recorded by the survey, 47 of them located at least partly within the right-of-way. Recommendations concerning each of these sites have been prepared. A cost estimate for additional archaeological investigations, which are recommended in the event of direct impact from the proposed railroad construction, is included in this report. A proposal outlining the goals and strategies of such a program of study has also been prepared. This is a revised report of the original dated to 09/30/1976.

The results of investigations at 47 archaeological sites along the Coronado railroad corridor from St. Johns, Arizona, to Navajo, Arizona, are presented. Of the 47 sites, 14 were surface collected and recorded, 9 were tested, and 24 were excavated as fully as possible given the constraints of the impact corridor. Data contributing to the study of the Anasazi-Mogollon (Cibola) culture area are discussed in chapters on environment, architecture, ground stone, shell, and human skeletal remains. An extensive appendix carries thorough descriptions of all 47 sites. Specific research on the Coronado railroad sites is concerned with the questions of prehistoric land use, the focused analysis of individual sites, and the identification and definition of a Cibola culture distinct from its Anasazi and Mogollon neighbors. Analyses indicate considerable cross-cultural influences in architectural style, and in trade in the project area. Settlement-subsistence patterns conform to those previously studied in the region of the Little Colorado River drainage in east-central Arizona.

During 1974-1978, the Museum of Northern Arizona conducted an extensive archaeological mitigation program for the Salt River Project prior to the construction of the Coronado Generating Plant near St. Johns, Arizona, and its energy corridors, the Coronado-Silver King Transmission Line and the Coronado Coal-Haul Railroad. Ceramic material from those corridors was separated from remaining project data and reported on herein. Over 148 ceramic-bearing sites produced a wide range of decorated and undecorated whitewares, redwares, and brownwares from this area of the American Southwest that is pivotal between the Anasazi region to the north and the Mogollon region to the south. A discussion of cultural affiliation, exchange, and chronology of the study area through ceramic evidence from several sites is presented (human occupancy ca. Basketmaker III - Pueblo IV periods); and the larger problem of Southwestern ceramic typology is addressed, both in a narration of traditional problems, and in a typological consensus test employing Cibola whitewares. A thorough petrographic study of ceramic thin-sections was made to test specific hypotheses.