Calabasas

The Sobaipuri site of San Cayetano de Calabasas is probably located to the south of Sonoita Creek on a terrace overlooking the Santa Cruz. Calabasas the
Hispanic site is located on a knoll overlooking the terrace that overlooks the Santa Cruz.

In the early 1990s, as part of the an Arizona-State-Parks-sponsored survey and planning grant Seymour (1993) conducted a "Piman Settlement Survey in the
Middle Santa Cruz River Valley" attempting to locate Sobaipuri sites between Tumacacori and Guevavi/Nogales. Several sites were encountered, some just
remnants of sites that had been bulldozed as part of a housing development. Earlier surveys had also documented O'odham sites (Seymour 1991a, 1991b, 1993a,
1993b, 1997).

Refrences Cited

Fontana, Bernard

1971 Calabasas on the Rio Rico. The Smoke Signal, No. 24.

Seymour, Deni J.

1991a A Cultural Resources Inventory of the Proposed Guevavi Ranch Preserve, Santa Cruz County, Arizona. SWCA, Inc. Environmental Consultants,
Tucson. (Authorship is sometimes inappropriately cited as SWCA.)

1991b Results of the Supplemental Survey for the Guevavi Ranch Preserve, Santa Cruz County, Arizona. SWCA, Inc. Environmental Consultants, Tucson.
(Authorship is sometimes inappropriately cited as SWCA.)

1992 The Archaeology of the Plain and Subtle. Poster presented at the Third Southwest Symposium, Tucson, Arizona. January 1992.

1993a In Search of the Sobaipuri Pima: Archaeology of the Plain and Subtle. Archaeology in Tucson, Vol. 7, No.1. Center for Desert Archaeology,
Tucson.

1993b Piman Settlement Survey in the Middle Santa Cruz River Valley, Santa Cruz County, Arizona. Report submitted to Arizona State Parks in
fulfillment of survey and planning grant contract requirements. On file at the Arizona State Museum.

1997 Finding History in the Archaeological Record: The Upper Piman Settlement of Guevavi. Kiva 62(3):245-260.

A Sobaipuri site was identified on the lower terrace to the south of the NPS location, suggesting that this was the original, or at least an earlier,
Sobaipuri Calabasas settlement. No other settlements of the correct age were found in the vicinity, although one of the earliest Sobaipuri sites known
(AD 1424-1524) is present along the borders of Sonoita Creek.

The location of what is now under National Park Service jurisdiction does not
possess evidence of a Sobaipuri occupation. An O'odham projectile point was
found as was an O'odham house, worked iron, and a cluster of organic-tempered
O'odham plainware (post 1770s), but no evidence of the Sobaipuri (Seymour
1993). This means that the Sobaipuri settlement was situated elsewhere or that
all evidence of the Sobaipuri occupation has been obliterated under the
complex sequence of reuse at the NPS locality (see Fontana 1971 for a
discussion of the complex occupational sequence). Multiple survey efforts to
identify a Sobaipuri component at this location were unsuccessful.