The northern San Pedro River Valley is a complicated and slightly obscure area. If you can navigate the complicated patchwork of land ownership there is an amazing landscape to experience, but you won't find interpretative signs or obvious resources to help you understand the layers of meaning, usage and history that overlay the landscape.
'Migrants and Mounds: Classic Period Archaeology of the Lower San Pedro Valley' edited by Jeffery J. Clark and Patrick D. Lyons is the result of the Center for Desert Archaeology's - now Archaeology Southwest - San Pedro Preservation Project. The project included 11 years of fieldwork that examined 46 of the previously known sites in the valley and recorded 442 new sites.
Migrants and Mounds is probably best described as an 'archaeological report and reference' the majority of the work is neither light reading nor, I suppose, really meant for cover to cover reading. But with so few resources about the Lower San Pedro River Valley it offers an invaluable insight into this landscape.
Migrants and Mounds - Chapter 1 - The River, The Research, and the Report:
The results of archaeological research conducted as part of the Center for Desert Archaeology’s (now Archaeology Southwest) San Pedro Preservation Project are presented in this volume. The fieldwork component of this project was conducted in the northern, or lower, San Pedro Valley from 1990 through 2001. Fieldwork included an extensive survey of the terraces overlooking the Lower San Pedro Valley floodplain (1990-1995). In the second phase of the project (1999-2001), test excavations were conducted at many of the principal Classic period (A.D. 1200-1450) settlements in the area. The field effort was accomplished by a large and varied cast of volunteers and student interns under the supervision of professional archaeologists from multiple institutions.