Land Tenure and the Development of the Stone Camp Community

The Stone Camp Community is located in an upland setting at the divide of two tributary drainages of the Verde River. The initial occupation of the study area was likely sustained by floodwater farming of relatively small areas as early as A.D. 900. By the late A.D. 1200s, habitation and dry farming areas expanded onto the surrounding upper finger ridges. In the late A.D. 1300s and 1400s, three aggregated room blocks, with a combined total of over 75 rooms, formed the core of the community. Surrounding the room blocks are more than 100 dispersed, single- and multi-room structures. In this paper, I theorize that the dispersed structures, adjacent to probable agricultural fields, represent land-tenure, dry land claims. Using ethnographic analogy and archaeological evidence, I conclude that the patterned distribution of surface structures on the upland ridges represents heritable, household-level land tenure units that evolved in response to the increased population aggregation in the valley during the late A.D. 1200s