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Salt Erosion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Julian D. Hayden
Julian D. Hayden*
Affiliation:
Yuma, Arizona
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Extract

Severe, occasionally disastrous, erosion of the bases of adobe walls in the arid and semiarid regions of the Southwest is a phenomenon which has long been observed and commented upon. In historic times, erosion of this type has caused collapse of adobe buildings in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico; about Tucson, Arizona, it is serious, as it is in the Salt River Valley. Evidence of similar erosion has been noticed in excavations of prehistoric massive adobe or caliche walls of Hohokam and Salado structures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries A.D. in the Salt and Gila River valleys of Arizona. Repair to check erosion and prevent collapse of walls was the primary purpose of Cosmos Mindeleff's stay at Casa Grande in the 1890's. Fewkes noticed similar cutting of standing walls at the nearby Adamsville site.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , April 1945 , pp. 373 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1945

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References

1 Jesse Walter Fewkes, “Casa Grande, Arizona.” Bureau of American Ethnology, 28th Annual Report (1912), Pis. 2, 10, 18, and pp. 92, 105, 116. Cosmos Mindeleff, “Casa Grande Ruin,” Bureau of American Ethnology, 20th Annual Report (1896), Pis. 54, 55, and p. 300.

2 Tests by Paul Brown, soil chemist for the Salt River Valley Water Users Association.

3 Analyses by the College of Agriculture, University of Arizona.