Appendix

Canal

As discussed in a previous section on stonework, the evidence for an agricultural economy is not abundant. No one can say yet to what extent these people depended upon annual domestic crops. However, the location of the village was ideal for the practice of agriculture. At the present time (1940) there are many fields in the vicinity cultivated by the Papago. The closest of these fields are concentrated near the village of Burro Pond, less than half a mile west of Valshni Village. Flood water farming is practiced by the Papago. During the summer rainy season, the water is carried from the washes to the fields in irrigation ditches. Such a system could easily have been employed at Valshni Village in the same area that is row under cultivation.

No evidence was found to indicate that the occupants of Valshni Village did have any irrigation system, but during the course of the excavations a short canal was discovered one-half mile north of the site which showed that such methods were employed during the succeeding Sells Phase. Only one canal has been previously reported from Papagueria.

The canal found during the excavations was approximately one-half mile long and ran from east to west. On the surface the canal appeared only as two, low ridges with a gravel depression between them, all being slightly above the desert level. Attention was first called to it by two large mounds devoid of pottery, obviously man-made, and rising from 1.30 meters to 1.95 meters above the desert. It was found that the canal ran between these two mounds. Two trenches were dug across the canal, one at the point where the two mounds occurred, and one which would provide a normal cross-section. The former was designated Test 1, the latter, Test II.

Test II provided a good outline of the original canal. It had been dug into the hardpan, and the old channel was 1.60 meters below the present surface and originally had been 1.25 meters deep. The original width at the top of the channel is estimated to have been about 3.0 meters (Figure 30).

Test I showed at least three different levels which had served as the bottom of the channel. Apparently, Test I was dug almost at the end of the canal. At this point, either because of a decrease in the gradient or because of brush diversion dams, the flow of water had been slowed causing it to drop its load. In order to keep the channel clear, constant dredging had to be employed. The mud and gravel dredged out of the canal formed the two mounds on each side of it (Figure 31). Just west of this point are several large Papago fields, so probably brush dams built to divert the water out to prehistoric fields in the same place slowed the flow here.

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It is suggested that the canal was used only during flood season. Its source is in the Fresnal Wash from one-half to three-quarter of a mile east of the probable location of the fields then in use. This point is quite a distance from the source of the wash in the Baboquivari Mountains and today carries water only after an exceedingly heavy rainstorm, so it is doubtful that the canal ever had a permanent source of water.

The pottery associated with this canal would place it in the Sells Phase. It was undoubtedly utilized by the occupants of a large Sells Phase Site (Arizona DD:1:8 (ASM)) located one-half mile east of Valshni Village and therefore within easy distance of the arable land.

This canal has only an indirect bearing on the problem dealt with in this report, inasmuch as it shows the use of canal irrigation in the Sells Phase. It is included only as a matter of general interest to the archaeological picture in the area and to record a minor part of the archaeological work of the 1939-40 season.