![]() This type of agave doesn't naturally grow in the desert floor region on poor rocky bajada soil. About 1,000 years ago, the Hohokam (who also farmed maize) farmed agave using specialized rock constructs to grow agave murpheyi for food, fiber, and possibly trade. 1,200 A.D.) here were based around farming many types of crops. The Late Archaic cultures up to the Hohokam cultures (1200 B.C.E. to present, and part of a vast cultural network that stretched to South America and across the United States. This is one of the reasons why this area received the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area designation in 2018.Ĭontinuing discoveries in Marana paint a picture of a populated area along the Santa Cruz River that was nearly continuously occupied from 13,000 years B.C.E. back) period, and it is speculated that evidence of even older large scale farming at this same location will be discovered. by a thousand years.īecause of the discovery of the Las Capas site it is now known that there was sophisticated farming here during the Late Archaic-Early Agricultural (1,200 B.C.E. Its discovery pushed back the dates previously established for large scale agriculture in the U.S. The irrigation canal system was constructed for large scale cultivation of maize (corn). Named “Las Capas,” for the layers of soil and mud from the Santa Cruz River that leave distinctive striations (and stratigraphy) that reveal thousands of years of canals in the same place, this archaeology site is a 4,000 year-old irrigation canal system that covered more than 100 acres west of the I-10 freeway at Ina Road. ![]()
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