Pottery shards unearthed downtown hint at distant presidio trading partners

[Ptah]

If one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, some local researchers have unearthed a gold mine in downtown Tucson.

Artifacts sifted from more-than-200-year-old waste pits are shedding new light on the daily life and regional trading practices at Tucson’s original presidio.

The latest revelation: broken pieces of Zuni Indian pottery, possibly carried back to the presidio by Spanish soldiers after a long military expedition through present-day New Mexico in 1795.

“It’s just a reminder of how connected everybody was,” said Barbara Mills, a regents professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona. “It’s a reminder of how connected the world was then.”

The pottery pieces were found during a dig early last year on the west side of the historic Pima County Courthouse.

The work by Tucson-based Desert Archaeology uncovered parts of the foundations for the 1868 Pima County Courthouse, the 1880s City Hall and Jail and, in a surprise discovery, the abandoned cesspool for the 1881 county courthouse.

https://tucson.com/news/local/pottery-shards-unearthed-downtown-hint-at-distant-presidio-trading-partners/article_d70c8021-12e5-5fb1-8eeb-8078838bde43.html